


Matter of Innocence

by Seleniel



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Cute Cullen, F/F, F/M, Fluff, M/M, Minor Iron Bull/Dorian Pavus, Mystery, Porn With Plot, Redemption, Slow Burn, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-03-13 11:55:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 37
Words: 191,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13570092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seleniel/pseuds/Seleniel
Summary: It was a matter of need, really. Not so much a want.It had always been so simple. A sway of her full hips, a tilt of her head, a prolonged moment of eye contact. She had them wrapped around her finger in moments.And yet, her eye contact was met with an awkward shuffle of his feet and a quick end to the conversation. Her swaying hips drove him further away than they drew him in. And a tilt of her head had him stuttering apologies for disappointing her.Cullen Rutherford, Commander to the Inquisition’s forces, was impossible.----------With ghosts from her family and her days in the circle haunting her, Eleine Trevelyan must navigate her murky, unwilling role as Herald of Andraste and the Inquisitor. She was not the saviour any of them wanted, nor had she ever wanted to be a saviour. Can she become more than what her past made her? When it seems not to want to let her go?





	1. Want.

It was a matter of need, really. Not so much a _want_. It was the way his hair curled in those little blond locks. The way he jittered around, hands on his sword to keep himself centred. It was definitely the way he strode through the ranks of soldiers, keen eyes dressing them all down, and putting them back together the way he wanted.

It was how he smiled at her. The innocence. 

She could see it in him. The stutter she could cause, how he would falter and blush if she’d let her hand slide just a touch down his front. The way a single kiss could infuse red on those cheeks. The way that scarred mouth would stretch in a surprised moan.

She didn’t want him. She _needed_ him. 

It had always been so simple; a sway of her full hips, a tilt of her head, a prolonged moment of eye contact. She had them at her mercy in moments. The Templars in her circle had always been _easy_. Tempting men and women instilling the chant into their head and hearts was one of her better skills.

And yet, her eye contact was met with an awkward shuffle of his feet and a quick end to the conversation. Her swaying hips drove him further away than they drew him in. And a tilt of her head had him stuttering apologies for disappointing her. 

Cullen Rutherford, Commander to the Inquisition’s forces, was impossible. 

“—and the soldiers are home and recovering, thanks to your excellent work in the Fallow Mire.” Eleine lounged back on her chair, her eyes refocusing along with her mind. Josephine flourished over her clipboard, golden blouse gleaming in the candle light, dark brows drawn together in a pretty scowl. Beside her, Leliana bore her eyes into Eleine from across the chipped war table, not having missed her moment of distraction. Cassandra scowled down at the multitudes rift markings on the map, slices and spills of ink made long and looming by the rooms shadows.

And Cullen. Cullen stood beside Cassandra, large, gloved hands on the hilt of his sword, those golden eyes blinking at her; a mixture of respect and nervous energy embossed in amber. 

“Well.” She stretched, languorous, on the creaky chair she had dragged from outside the room. “It was a simple matter of incinerating a few dead bodies and the scant live ones." With one last roll of her neck, Eleine swung up to her feet. “If you’ve no further need of me?” 

“On the contrary,” Josephine lilted, her eyes finally leaving the clipboard, brows smoothing out. Eleine checked her already wandering body, curving her arms around her waist and cocking her hip. 

“There is a matter that requires your attention,” Leliana continued, voice clipped and lilting, “it is rather urgent.” 

Eleine restrained herself from remarking that sleep was rather urgent. “What is it?”

Josephine's dark eyes glittered with the flame of her clipboard's candle. “There have been several requests from your family to establish a meeting—“ 

Acid burned through Eleine's veins. “Burn them,” she spat, cutting off a startled Josephine. “Now,” she gave a bland smile, “there is nothing else?” Her eyes dared any other answer than _no_. A stillness had settled on the room. She did not lift her smoky eyes from Josephine, letting the woman fidget beneath their hostility. Her eyes did not slip across the slight space between Josephine and the war table, to take in that form dressed in mahogany, no matter how they itched to do so.

Taking advantage of their surprise, she swayed out the door, snapping it closed behind her. 

Forcing her jaw not to clench the way it ached to do so, she let out a sharp breath from her nose. Mother Giselle caught sight of her, and gave a curt: “Herald”. Eleine sent her eyes to the chantry ceiling, wondering what kind of Maker he was to dump her fine ass in such a place of likely destruction. If she did not die some horrid death by demons, she’d surely die at the hands of the zealous faithful. Herald of Andraste. Herald of Bedroom Sins, perhaps. 

She made sure to sway her hips as much as possible as she winked past Mother Giselle. The woman’s cluck of disapproval never failed to satisfy her. 

She had been offered the room in the chantry, perhaps some of the nicer accommodations in this frigid, degenerate village. But she had turned it down, disgusted. How was she supposed to sneak men and women into her room past the hawk that was Mother Giselle? Besides, the thought of sleeping beside idols of the holy bride made something in her quiver. 

No, she had no place in the chantry. Other than to be their prisoner. 

The dirt tracked rug was nothing but a blur beneath her long strides, and in a few more swallowing steps, she was at the large oak doors, hands ripping at the iron handles. Then she was out, boots crunching in sludge and snow, cool air slapping her face and biting her nose. 

She tried to still the rattling in her stomach, but once the images came unbidden, she knew they would not leave until they had raved and ruined. Already she could see a staining of distraction around the corners of her eyes, and she gave a few rapid blinks.

Ever since emerging from that prison cell she had been a spectacle for the fools of Haven, and again she struggled to resist waging a war on those sticking eyes. 

She had been watched her whole life, kept her whole life. Even now, when she was at last free of those circular walls of the circle and the vaulted ceilings of Trevelyan castle, she was a prisoner to inspection. 

Eleine slowed her gait, evened her steps, and lit a curving smile on her face. Weaving through the milling, stinking crowds, she was met with her cabins door at last. 

Only inside that warmth, that hollowness, did she shake off the eyes. 

Her hands sped through her buckles, belts and clothes, ripping and tearing them off her stained and bruised body for a bath she had long been looking forward to. 

She drew up to the edge of the tub, sharpening her mana into an iceberg, before breathing warmth till it melted to steaming water. 

Slipping into the warmth of her bath tub she had acquired – through less than savoury means she had no intention ever telling Josephine about – Eleine gave a low moan. Water lapped at the edges of the bath and rippled over her body, a glass sheen that did little to hide her scars and pain.

She rubbed at her sore muscles with shaking hands, her tight calves and thighs giving way under the combined pressure of her fingers and the heat. 

The hurt in her heart, in her mind, was not so easily kneaded away. Eleine leaned back, head tipping to rest in the steaming water. She kept her eyes closed. Not to run from the green seeping from her hand, but to face the visions that roiled behind her lids. 

_A boy, eyes softer than the sky, all happiness and kindness._ Eleine felt her chest constrict, a familiar clench now. _Ears elegant, sweeping into points. Teaching her about the trees, the herbs that hid amongst other things green. Taking her hand into his own, sharing his world with her. All love and joy._ Her breathing quickened, the heaving of her chest sending the water into a storm.

_And then all red._

_Stained, rent._

_Cleaved in two by the figure that was all rigid lines and steel._

_A figure that was her brother._

Eleine gave a cry and raised a hand to cover her mouth. The water splashed against the side of the bath, restless with her sobs. She contorted, folding in on herself, fingers dropping from her mouth to scratch down her arms. Scraping away some of that filth. 

But her finger nails were not long enough to reach the scum that ran through her veins. They grew soft from the water, bending in a way that made her back arch. She anchored herself on that horror. Let it slap her from the torrent. 

_Don’t let them see,_ was whispered to her. Nothing more than a breath against the shell of her ear. It was phantom; a slipping crutch she was losing more and more each day. Every day this Inquisition demanded more, sought more. Leliana with her nose like a blood mabari. Josephine with her Game taught grace and guile. 

They saw too much, wanted to know too much. And she had trouble concealing with the situation so raw around her. She felt herself being pulled from all sides in a way she had never been before. 

She had been clumsy as a child. Stupid. And she had lost so much. 

She could not afford it again. Could not weather another loss. 

Her heart shrunk behind the safety of her ribs. All images of Cullen scuttled far from her wants, far from her mind. 

She saw only the unforgiving sweep of a gilded sword. 

 

The morning itched its way under her lids. Eleine gave a jagged breath past the onrush of stiffness that came with waking. Her body ached in ways she had not known possible before the rebellion. 

Circle life did not require much physical movement, and all that running and murdering her way through mires had begun to wear on her soft body.

She pulled herself up, body complaining the whole way. With a groan, she rubbed at a tender spot on her right shoulder. “Too much killing,” she snarked. 

She was delighted by the thought of acquiring muscles, however. She could already see the heightened definition in her back, along her arms and legs. 

Eleine trudged to the chipped armoire she had shoved to the corner of the room. Everything in her room was chipped. A table in the right corner, that she never used, had great gouges across its surface from what appeared to be an axe. Her bed frame had scratches along the dull posts - those however, _were_ her doing.

She hiked up her tan breeches, fastening them around her stomach with a metal belt. Her undershirt caught around her arm, and she took several frustrated moments to pull it down and tuck it in. Finally, she pulled on the rest of her leathers, her vest, arm guards and outer robe, before huffing out of her room. 

The hustle of Haven was a slap to the face, and she took a few bitter moments to orient herself. Feet stomped past, mouths gaping open as they saw her. What Templars there were shone like stars with their metal plating gleaming in the morning sun. Varric caught sight of her scowling in front of her cabin and gave her an enthusiastic wave. Eleine sighed, jerking a wave back.

But she was not in the mood for Varric now. He saw too much, read too much into her actions. Just as everyone in the bloody Inquisition seemed to do. 

Eleine tramped down to the gates, intending for a game of exertion with a certain soldier to rid herself of the lingering images of her Maker damned childhood. Hand steadying her on the stone railing, she worked her way down the snow dusted steps. It was from there she caught sight of him.

She had intended on seeking out a different man. Holland, all flaming hair and freckles, who also happened to be built the way she had a deep appreciation of. Instead, she found herself with an eyeful of the Commander, sauntering through the ranks of the soldiers, hair glowing gold, shoulders made large and broad by his fur mantle. 

Amidst the grunts and groans of the struggling recruits, she could hear his voice.

All honey and mellow. “You there. There’s a shield in your hand. Block with it. If this man were your enemy you’d be dead.” Eleine strolled down the remaining steps, making her way to him on silent, unbidden footsteps. 

Cullen turned to the Templar beside him, the ruby fur brushing his sharp jaw. “Lieutenant, don’t hold back, the recruits must prepare for a real fight, not a practice one.”

The man beside him slapped a closed fist to his chest. “Yes, Commander.” He weaved off through the men and hide tents, yelling and comforting in equal measures. 

Eleine swayed up beside Cullen, enjoying the look of surprise on his face as she appeared beside him. That mouth parted, those sparkling eyes widening. Then Cullen folded his arms, breaking eye contact with her as soon as it had been established. She bit back a few sharp words. Patience, she reminded herself. This was a game she was used to. He was a man. He had needs. 

Soon she’d convince him _she_ could see to them. 

Cullen glanced over at her from his shoulder, before averting his eyes back to the soldiers. “We’ve received a number of recruits. Locals from haven and some pilgrims.” He let her see those eyes again. “None made quite the entrance you did.”

Eleine cocked a hip, a trill of pleasure snaking its way through her core. “At least I got everyone’s attention.” 

He smiled. “That you did.” Before she could dip a little further, and ask just how much of _his_ attention she had gotten, he began walking through the newcomers. She stalked behind, following in the wake of his spiced scent, equal parts agitated and mystified. 

“I was recruited to the Inquisition in Kirkwall myself,” he began and she was struck, not for the first time, by his gentle cadence. “I was there during the mage uprising. I saw firsthand the devastation it caused.” Eleine watched him from the side of her eye. She saw the shadow that clung to his brow at the statement, and wondered at the horrors he had seen. 

Probably no more than they had here. Everyone had a story from the uprising. Everyone had a scar. 

A messenger ran up behind them, missive in hand. “Sir.” He placed the note in Cullen’s eyesight. 

“Cassandra sought a solution.” Cullen took the note, reading quickly. “When she offered me a position I left the Templars to join the cause.” At the end of the training grounds, he stopped at last. The frozen lake shimmered behind him, the snow capped landscape making him look like a drop of blood on ice. “Now it seems we face far worse.”

Eleine almost laughed. He could say that again, two hundred times, and it still would not be enough to account for the extent of the situation they were in. 

Still, she sought to dispel the tension above his brow. “I must have this mark for a reason.” Though her tone was flippant, it was her true hopes. “It will work,” she soothed, “I’m sure of it.” She met his eyes again, to see his appreciation of her statement plastered so clearly across his face. 

His lips quirked up into a crooked smile. The man was a marvel.

“Provided we can secure aid, but I’m confident we can. The Chantry lost control of both Templars and Mages,” he turned to an approaching messenger, but his face only grew more animated, “now they argue over a new Divine while the Breach remains. The Inquisition could act,” he rested his hand on the hilt of his sword, “where the Chantry cannot. Our followers would be part of that. There’s so much we can—“ He broke off, catching himself. Eleine wiped off her smile before he saw it. She had not realised she was smiling till he set those eyes back on her. He shook his head, embarrassment tinging his cheeks. “Forgive me, I doubt you came here for a lecture.”

Eleine cocked a hip. “No,” she agreed, voice dropping a few decimals, “but if you have one prepared I’d love to hear it.”

Cullen chuckled, a light, pleasing sound. “Another time, perhaps.” Oh, he had no idea what he had just said, did he? Eleine found herself controlling her expression yet again. From any other man that would have been a clear invitation. From him, she knew, it had been completely innocent. 

He would drive her crazy, she knew. 

But so much already threatened to tear away her sanity again.

Why not lose it to such sweet pleasure? 

Eleine gave him a slow, arching smile. The type she reserved for _her_ invitations. 

Cullen blinked. “I… uh—“ he cleared his throat and gave a small, shallow sigh. “There’s still a lot of work ahead.” She tilted her head at the deflection. She took a step forward, eyes beckoning.

“Commander,” another messenger called. Eleine turned to him, remembering his features for a later time. “Sir Ryden has a report on our supply lines.”

Cullen turned from her, but kept those warm eyes on her. He gave a small laugh before leaving to attend his duties. “As I was saying.”

“Herald,” a messenger skidded to a stop beside her, “urgent news. Josephine wishes for your presence in her office immediately.”

Eleine sighed. “Duty, duty, duty. Ah, but it is this simple soldiers pleasure.” She strode past the messenger, giving her a wink. The woman flushed, and bumbled away. 

She kept her eyes forward, breezing past her army of onlookers. It took nothing less than all her will to re-enter the Chantry, so soon after having her past memories ripped open.

She had no doubt in her mind this was going to be a very similar experience. 

She found Josephine head deep in papers, golden blouse a startling colour against the drab, reserved shades of Haven. 

“Ah, Herald—“ Josephine pushed a few piles to the right, opening her up to Eleine’s view, “forgive me for the sudden request.”

“Not at all, dear ambassador,” Eleine lilted, ambling over to inspect some of the ink cramped papers on her desk. “What can I do for you?”

“I’d like to discuss your parents.” Eleine uncurled each of her fingers, careful as could be, from around the missive she held. She had almost crushed it. 

Eleine took a breath. “A little sudden, but it’s time someone made an honest woman out of me.” She crossed her arms, giving a lax smile. 

“What?” Josephine halted but caught herself, mouth crooking up into a smile. “Very funny. This is serious.”

She had no idea. Eleine evened her voice, but hardened her eyes. “Then discuss away, Ambassador.”

Josephine eyed her, something far too sharp in her eyes. “Val Royeaux has noted your lineage. It gives the Inquisition some legitimacy, although not so much as we’d hoped.” Her father’s doing, no doubt. “But the longer we deny your family an audience, even that could be dispersed with a few words.”

Eleine sucked on her teeth, turning her eyes to the stone ceiling. “I ask that you leave this subject here, in this room. Next time you insist on approaching the topic, I will be much less pleasant to deal with.” She looked back down at Josephine, knowing her grey eyes were keened to a blade.

Irritation flickered in Josephine’s own orbs. “And what would you have me do?”

Eleine flicked her eyes back up, tracing the cobbled patters on the roof, breathing in, and breathing out. She spoke with her next exhalation. “Consider the Trevelyan’s of no familial ties to me. There is no business I will conduct with them, and therefore, Josephine, this lies to you to navigate. I close rifts, I fight and get bloodied and ruined. You traverse the Game. You’re more than capable, Ambassador. Or perhaps you are inferring… otherwise?” She withheld a leer. 

A silence, thick and cloying entered the office. Eleine returned her gaze to Josephine, maintaining an impassive expression. She would not be moved. She would not meet with him. She would not. Not even if he threatened to have everyone in Haven murdered. At last Josephine sighed. “Yes, as you wish, Herald.” 

Eleine left the advisor under her stare for a few more moments. One last warning. Josephine looked down, away.

Satisfied, she bid goodbye to the Antivan, unconcerned when it was not returned, and rallied herself for another trip through the chantry. She hurried to the door, slipping out into the freedom of the green torn Haven sky. She ignored the addresses and whispers and waves. She had one place she wanted to be. One thing she wanted to be doing. 

Outside, past Cullen’s men and into the woods, there was a ring of mages, barrelling into one another, magic flinging up each which way it pleased. She breathed out, heavy, toxic, and approached in steady steps. 

They froze at the sight of her, but relaxed when she clasped an unused staff. She rose an eyebrow. “Anyone willing?”

They grinned, and her fire simmered low in her belly. She would slash those grins from their foolish lips.

 

Eleine leapt up from her position on the ground, careening her body to the side. Just in time. Splinters of ice erupted from her previous position. Unforgiving shards that would have impaled her, Herald or no. 

A wild laugh spilled form her lips, not for the first time since the fight began. Pathetic. Such weak offensive magic. These mages knew nothing about the true desire to do someone harm, to take a life. Eleine heaved in a breath, found the image in her mind, and lit the ground in a torrent of flames, arcing from her feet to her opponent. 

Harley panicked, his eyes wide moons. There was nowhere for him to go. The spectators gasped, several screamed, as the clearing erupted in flames. 

Eleine made a small island in her mind, and her mana swung to circle Harley, quelling the flames that licked at his feet. The heat was still present, and through the roaring furnace she could see blisters forming on his face. 

She had won. Again. 

She stamped out the flames, her mana a corporeal hand that slammed to the ground. 

There was an uproar of claps, but as Eleine truly inspected the faces around her, there was fear. Poignant and revolting. 

Another part of her whispered they should fear. They should all fear her.

They had no idea the things she’d done. 

Cullen emerged from amongst the crowd, eyes unreadable. Eleine handed off the borrowed staff to a mage nearby, not letting her eyes off Cullen for a moment. 

She wondered what he’d do if she flirted with him now. 

She wondered what the ex-Templar saw when he looked at her.

A mage to be corralled, chained, and stripped of everything that made her, her?

Or was that a shadow of appreciation in his eyes, the lust of man so used to denying himself? 

Before her titillation could take her places that would scare him off completely, Cullen beckoned to her, seriousness etched into the lines of his face. 

She blew out a heavy breath. Violence still rallied in her, but she followed the man anyway. 

As she reached his side, the crowd parting before her, she noticed the sun had disappeared over the mountain. There, her eyes were drawn to the gaping hole of death and green fury. It was nothing like she had ever seen before. She wondered how small she would appear, from heights like that. 

Cullen looked to the sky, eyes sombre. But he didn’t comment. She was grateful. There was nothing to be said about it, not anymore. 

“Leliana sent me to find you. The war meeting is beginning.” 

Eleine nodded, falling into easy steps beside his much longer gait. 

She felt him watching her, and it took all of her willpower not to look at the expression on his face. She kept her eyes forward. “You are not even sweating,” he remarked.

She laughed. “Bring me hordes of the undead and a blood mage or two, and you might see a few beads.”

Cullen’s gave a dry chuckle. “I don’t know whether to be appalled or impressed.”

She looked up at him, feeling her eyelashes brush her skin. “Oh, Commander, such flattery.” 

He cleared his throat, averting his eyes. She reeled herself back in a touch, retreating the intensity of her attraction for a façade of unburdened indifference. He looked back, and seemed to still. “I was— um…” he looked ahead of them, “Oh, here we are.” As he hurried off, opening the door for her and ushering her in, she made sure to stride further ahead than him. 

She hoped his eyes were on her ass, because she was providing him with a very good view. 

The candlelit corridor swayed around her, stone pillars leaping out of the shadows to garb at her, to hide her in the musty depths of the building. She tried to keep her attention rooted on the man behind her. He had such a large presence. His powerful gait clattered on the thinly covered stone and his tall frame sent his shadow cutting across the ground in front of her. By the time the war room door was staring her in the face, she was centred.

She pushed the creaking door open, swinging into the room with ease. The map loomed in front of her, a thousand dots of work and death to be dealt. 

“Herald.” Leliana dipped her head from the left corner of the room. Eleine nodded back. Cassandra gave her a cursory glance, but went back to glaring at the map soon after and Josephine scribbled on her clipboard, no doubt dealing some justice by wrangling the nobles. 

Cullen closed the door behind him, such a final click resounding through the room, and justice started straight after. Eleine listened with half an ear as Josephine regaled them with one political incursion after another. It was when Leliana began detailing some juicy secrets she had uncovered that could help Josephine that she tuned in fully, soaking up the information. 

At last talk turned to the events of tomorrow they all knew hovered over them. It was Leliana who first broached the topic. Eleine was not surprised. 

“Are you prepared, Herald?” she asked, eyes keen on Eleine. All eyes swung to her now, even Cassandra’s, who pulled her gaze from the burning hole she had created on the table. 

Eleine's lips cut up into a false smile. “Yes, dear spymaster. I am ready.”

“We set out at dawn tomorrow. It will take us two weeks to make it to Redcliffe, and from there the assault will begin immediately.” Cassandra widened her stance. 

Eleine paced, making slow laps of the room. She enjoyed the way Cullen’s eyes did not leave her. “I’m ready,” she reiterated.

“Then we have no more to discuss,” Leliana concluded, hands coming to clasp behind her back. 

Eleine recovered at the thought of slipping into another bath. There was some dirt and grime from her fights she wouldn’t mind cleaning off before she slept. She stopped her stroll before the door. “Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll collect as much rest as I can.”

Josephine opened her mouth and Eleine pretended not to see, making a clean escape of the room, poise intact.

She’d managed to scurry across to the large oak door when Josephine’s voice hunted after her. 

“Herald— forgive me, Herald. Just a moment of your time?” Eleine gave a grievous sigh, letting her bare fingers drop from the door handle. She turned back to see the advisors trickling out of the door, Josephine at the lead, a bundle of envelopes in hand. All eyes on her, she raised a brow at Josephine and made no effort to move. Josephine seemed a little startled, but made her way to Eleine with no complaints. Cassandra and Leliana moved on to speak with Mother Giselle, but Cullen – beautiful Cullen – followed behind Josephine. 

“I do not know what your relationship with your family is like,” Josephine began, hesitance marring her Antivan cadence, “but the last letter mentioned a series of political consequence we cannot afford if we do not respond. I only ask you give a reply.” She gave her a few moments for a response and seemed to bristle when Eleine just looked at her. Her pretty mouth twisted down into a frown. 

But Eleine had made her stance perfectly clear, twice in fact. Cullen had reached them by now, and angled his body to appear as though he were trying to leave. 

She cocked her hip, blocking the handle with her ass. The Commander was as trapped as she was now. His arm froze mid reach, his startled eyes darting to her face before dropping to the floor. His arm hung limp at his side now. 

Why should she suffer alone?

She turned to Josephine. “Then send them back a hand.”

“Excuse me, Herald?” Josephine halted. 

“A hand, Josie,” Leliana said, drawing up beside them, a raven swooping to gore. “The Herald wants you to send them back a disembodied appendage.” 

“Preferably an undead hand. I do so love how they still move.” 

“Why, I…” Josephine was drawing back. 

Leliana turned on Eleine now, eyes hard. “I had thought you were interested in seeing this Inquisition succeed?”

Eleine felt acid coat her tongue. They had no idea what they stuck their pretty booted toes in. “Respond exactly as I dictate, Ambassador.” Josephine fumbled with her clipboard, and stood poised with her quill. “The Herald of Andraste sends her heartfelt condolences she did not respond sooner. There were matters of import requiring her time…” Eleine waited until Josephine caught up. She swept in close to the Ambassador, catching her eyes as she spat the last words. “She welcomes you to attempt to destroy the efforts of the Inquisition. She’ll love one more excuse to leave you to the slaughter of demons.”

She felt Cullen’s eyes burn on the side of her face, but did not look to them. There was fire buzzing beneath her skin and an inferno broiling in her hand. Sparks skittered off her mark, startling all but her. 

“As far as I know,” Cassandra broke the silence, drawing up beside them, “The Trevelyan were a benevolent family, one of the few not insufferable in the Free Marches.” 

Eleine laughed, her face to the ceiling. She felt the pain bubbling in her stomach taint each peal. “Don’t be ridiculous, Cassandra dearest.” Cassandra flinched at the mocked endearment. Eleine got far too close to Cassandra’s face to be friendly. “The depravity of the Trevelyan runs thicker than elf blood coats the streets of Val Royeaux.” 

She flexed her hand. “Send them a hand, Ambassador. They’ll understand my meaning perfectly.” With this, she closed her throbbing fist around the Chantry handle, and pulled the door ajar.

Just as she had half slipped out the door, freedom almost in sight, Leliana’s voice grated all over her raw feelings. “And you?” she scathed, “does this depravity lie in you as well?” 

Eleine felt the tension wash over her for a few beats of silence. Her stomach turned to steel.

And so did her spine. 

Stepping back into the suffocation of the Chantry, she turned back to face Leliana. Something on her face, perhaps in her eyes, must have startled Leliana, for she took a sharp step back and her hands twitched to hidden blades. Though Eleine made no move to be violent, there was nothing but violence in her voice. 

“No more than it does in you, _left hand of the Divine_.”

Yes, she wanted to say. Yes. 

She was a Trevelyan through and through. 

Unable to escape the rotten core that had been bred into her. 

At least this icy little hovel, she could run from tomorrow.


	2. That Fool Of A Boy

Eleine dipped her fingers into the running stream, delighting in the coolness of the liquid. She took a few moments to splash her face, before running a wet hand over the back of her neck. 

Her hair was damp and sticking to her collar and face in ways that agitated her. She yanked out her pony tail, eyes tracking the jagged rocks on the opposite side of the brook. Tipping her head forward she gathered the wayward strands, hitching them back up as high as she could manage. Birds chittered overhead, undisturbed.

Her ears were primed to hear every scuttle, every slip of a stone. She leaned back on her heels, feeling the pleasant and building burn in her limbs. 

“Boss,” Bull stomped down the hill to her side, “it’s time to head out.” 

Eleine studied the rocks for a few moments longer, before pitching her head up to cop an eyeful of Bull’s looming figure. “Your frame could obscure the sun, Bull.”

He gave her a grin, clasping the arm she offered and pulling her up. “Oh, don’t stop there.”

She laughed and made her way back up to camp. 

Bull grumbled behind her. “I wasn’t joking.”

“Of course you weren’t,” she returned, weaving through the ram hide tents, “I will sit in the golden throne before the Qunari develop a sense of humour.”

Dorian snorted from his place crouched by the fire. Bull came up from behind her. “Something funny, Imperium?”

“Only the accuracy of our dear Heralds observation.” 

“Boys,” she cut in, strapping her staff to her back, “I know I’m divine, but fight over me later. We have another day and a half of travel, and if we could make it there without more ‘ _my empire is bigger than yours_ ’ I’d be extraordinarily pleased.” 

Solas padded into the camp, raising a brow at the commotion. She rolled her eyes, and he caught on, weariness plain in his own. It had been an inordinate two weeks. 

She breathed in, tasting the honey dew and grass on her tongue. The Hinterlands was beauty and ferocity in equal measure. Even after her thorough eradication of the bandits and warring Mages and Templars, more had flooded into the area. It had become a cesspool of death, demons, and depravity. 

The crossroads, the object of their travel and desires, was a beacon of hope and an island of safety. 

Eleine strode to the edge of the camp, looking back at her companions with a tinge of impatience. “We’re leaving now.”

Bull hefted his man-sized hammer onto his back, a grin cut into his face. Solas, as ethereal as he always was, picked his way to her side. Dorian brushed himself off – an unnecessary act, the man was spotless – and joined the group. 

“I have never been in a group with so many mages before,” Bull thudded to her left. Eleine snapped her head to her right, staring Solas down. The elf caught her look, and closed his mouth. 

_Maker_ she could not stand one more argument about Qunari mages. Regardless of how much their treatment revolted her. Her companions had been barrelling against each other since the outset, culture shock and old bias a swirling mass that picked at their raw emotions. Eleine wanted silence, she wanted cooperation.

She wanted some _maker damned_ bandits to punish. 

The air held a stilted silence, and she had no doubt her companions had picked up on her irritation. Oh, how she sorely wished Varric was here. The man could oil up any group of people and make them giddy and glad to be with one another. She’d even take Blackwall, the man barely spoke a word, and when he did it was mostly to mourn the people they killed. 

Such a strange warden with such haunted eyes. 

Eleine tilted her head to the canopy above them, observing the chips of blue that sat amongst the forest greens. She stepped into a frondescent umbrage. The cool wash of shade soothed her, and she let the tension slide off her shoulders.

Soon. Soon, they would put Alexius down. Soon she would be slipping into her bath, rubbing away at the pain and exertion in her limbs.

 _Oh, Haven_ , she thought. _Cannot live in it, but cannot live outside it, either._

 

They had travelled for nearly three hours before they encountered trouble. Eleine felt the smatterings of battle reach her ears, and a sharp grin slashed across her face. 

“Up ahead,” she cautioned, before taking off, racing through the underbrush and low hanging trees. At each pounding contact her feet made with the uneven ground, her excitement grew. 

Battle. Release. _At last._

She unhinged her staff from behind her back, the bloodstone infused crystal gleaming with violence. 

As she burst through the woods into a glade, she saw leathered men and women, a group of about fifteen, circling three harried Templars. Bandits. 

Eleine sought to thundering flow of her mana, and released a torrent of flames. Three bursts she coalesced into balls, their accuracy heightened and meeting their mark. The rest she allowed to spew forth to light upon what they wished, their intensity a fear tactic as opposed to anything else. 

The moment her world was nothing but flame and death, she felt the old comfort settle on her. Here, she was home. There were no expectations of her beyond that of her to deal death and face it. She registered her companions joining her as the screams of the bandits turned to gurgles and shrieks. Bull was no doubt somewhere cleaving someone in two, and Solas was definitely corralling others into the path of Dorian’s lightening. 

Eleine saw the Templars becoming overwhelmed as three bandits remained on them. One, a man she could see as the least winded, was pushing the other two behind him, attempting to deal on his own. She scoffed. 

Eleine tended the fire in her belly. Her mana swirled on her palm, and she raised it to her mouth. With a gentle breath, she blew. 

Out licked flame, small, churning. She focused, heaved in a breath, and released the power in her stomach. A tornado of flame, hungry, roaring, spun off her hand to consume the clearing. It chased rapids in the air, whirling and writhing, until it came upon the remaining bandits.

She delighted in the fear that shook them to their knees, hands raising before them to stave off the inevitable. Their dying screams were cut off before they had time to fully form. 

And then there was none. She breathed in, sucking back the tornado, letting it sift into her body, cooling and channelling harmless mana. 

Ash crusted underfoot and suffused the air in plumes. There was such a raging silence, an emptiness where there had only moments before been crescendos. To her left she heard Bull whistle. 

Eleine spared him a look, seeing his eyes on her. She heard a crack from under her boot, and looked down to see bone, possibly rib. Solas materialised to her right. 

The three Templars collapsed where they stood, a concoction of fear and relief on their faces. She stomped her way to them, heedless of the unknown substances beneath her feet. The closer she drew to them through the black haze, the more something lit within her.

 _Recognition_.

Two men and a woman. The thinnest of the group, scrawny, tousled hair she knew had nothing to do with the commotion previous. Pale complexion and a smattering of freckles. 

“Hello, Sven,” she cooed, swaying out of the clouds of ash. She crouched beside his band of petrified Templars. “Long-time no save.”

“Eleine?” Sven spluttered, wild panic stretching across his face. “What? You’re alive?”

Eleine laughed. “You did not seriously think the rebellion would destroy me, did you?”

He shook his head, some colour returning to his cheeks. “No, not really.” His companions, and hers, for that matter, looked between them, wary and confused.

She sheathed her staff, clasped his arm and hauled the young man up. She brushed off some dust on his chest plate. 

His friends limped to their feet, drawing back behind Sven. Sven put his hands on their shoulders. “Don’t worry, we can trust her.”

Eleine tipped her head back, roaring with laughter. “You say that funniest things, Sven.”

He shrugged his shoulders, unconcerned. “You saved me then, and you’re saving me now. I trust you.” 

“Well, well, well,” Dorian took ginger steps to her side, “and what have we here?” 

Bull and Solas joined them, silent and unnerving. She waved a hand at her companions. “Solas, Bull, Dorian.” She gestured to Sven. “Sven.”

Sven gave a shy smile. “I was a Templar at Ostwick circle.” 

Dorian grinned at the young man, walking up and adjusting his wayward coloured wrap. “Oh, do tell us what our dear Herald was like in the circle? Was she trouble?” 

Sven’s mouth fell open. “H— Herald?”

Eleine sighed. “Let’s get you three to safety, shall we?” She pulled the dumbfounded Sven by his elbow, marshalling him out of the clearing. Sven looked behind him to motion his comrades forward and, hesitant, they followed. Dorian raised his brow at her, and she shot him a confused look. 

What?

“We’re about four hours out from Corporate Vale in the Crossroads. Do you think you three can walk for that long, or do you need a rest?” 

Sven pulled himself together. “Maybe just a few minutes first.” 

Eleine nodded, leading them to a stream she heard gurgling nearby. She crouched down, cupping some water in her hands and only then noticing the thick layer of ash covering her right glove. 

She sighed, scrubbing it off, pleased when she found the fabric was unsinged. Bull dropped down beside her. He looked at her from the corner of his eyes. She readied herself for whatever was coming. 

“Your magic is…” Bull looked down to the water parting around his hand. 

“Brutal?” Dorian squatted next to Bull, flapping his coat out of reach of the ground. “Savage?” 

Solas fell into place by her other side, remaining silent, but she saw his ears twitch. He was listening, and interested.

Eleine rolled her shoulders, but Sven beat her to a reply. “She’s always been like that,” he piped up. She glared over her shoulder at him, in the huddle of Templars. The woman tensed when she looked over, and Eleine inspected the two unknown Templars. 

The man had a dark look in his green eyes, but it was of a haunted quality. He brushed a shaky hand through his black hair. Not a threat.

The woman wore armour two times too big for her, and fiddled with it, uncomfortable. She was diminutive, thin and un-muscled. Not a threat.

Dorian finished primping his moustache, and turned to Sven. “You have yet to answer my earlier question.”

Sven gave a shaky smile. “I didn’t know her much before the rebellion, just saw her occasionally with… um—“ he cleared his throat, and she hid a smile, “with… some people.”

Dorian swept to his feet, face incredulous. “’ _With some people’_ – is that the best you can do?”

Sven was blushing, and wiped a hand across his forehead to try and hide it. Eleine took pity on him. “I was occasionally caught… _enjoying_ , someone or rather.”

Dorian laughed. “So nothing has changed.”

Eleine gave a darker smile. “No, I don’t think so.”

“I have noticed,” Solas’ voice broke some of the mounting tension in her, “that your magic does have a rather vicious presence.”

Eleine sighed. “Then perhaps the Maker truly is alive, and has given the Inquisition a gift of a capable soldier.” 

“She was like that then too,” Sven said, taking shy steps towards them, “when the rebellion started.”

Solas frowned. “I thought Ostwick circle did not rebel.”

Sven looked taken aback. “Of course it rebelled.” He looked at Eleine, lost. 

She clasped her arms, uncomfortable. “The outside world seems to be rather… unaware of the conditions in Ostwick circle.”

Sven’s mouth fell open. “But— but it was… that does not make any sense.”

She prowled to the woman Templar, smelling the tang of blood. “Our Ambassador told me it was known as _sedate._ ” The woman shook as she drew near, and Eleine smoothed her gait, trying to appear small, unthreatening. 

It did not work. Eleine traced a graze down the woman’s cheek that dipped below the collar of her armour. “Solas,” she called, “she’s injured.”

Solas came up behind her, and Eleine retreated, watching the woman relax as she did so. She was either touchy about mages, or touchy about her. 

“Sedate,” Sven mumbled, sitting down on the ground, stunned. 

Dorian came to sit by his side. Sven concaved on himself the moment Dorian sat down, much to Eleine’s amusement. He tucked his head in and Dorian looked perplexed. She snickered under her breath, and Bull came up beside her, raising a brow. 

She took pity on Sven, using her foot to nudge Dorian over, and sitting between them. Sven relaxed, rubbing at his forehead. Eleine unhinged her staff that was uncomfortable on her back in this position. She toyed with the blade on the end, polishing it, rather than fill the uncomfortable silence. 

Dorian nudged her arm. “So your circle was… unpleasant, then?”

Eleine looked to the canopy above them. Her stomach broiled. “Yes.”

Dorian said nothing else, fiddling with his own staff in hand. Solas came up behind her, and motioned for her to follow him.

Eleine got to her feet, interested. Solas lead her to the edge of the wood, a fair distance away from the group, while they remained within eyesight. 

“The woman is a mage,” Solas announced. Not what she had expected.

“Oh dear,” she breathed. Solas nodded. 

“Well,” she cocked a hip, “I am not in the least bit surprised Sven got himself into this situation.” 

“It is not unlikely that she is passing to travel with greater safety.” Solas observed the woman.

Eleine nodded. “I do not see that we have any reason to expose her.”

“No,” Solas agreed. 

“Either way,” Eleine sought out the deepening blue of the sky, “it’s time we move.” Eleine picked her way back to the group, stopping before an uncomfortable Sven. “Are you ready?” She asked. 

He nodded, looking relieved. Eleine smirked, holding out an arm for him to pull himself up. 

Dorian shot her a confused look. She just smiled back. 

She was surprised to find travelling with Sven lightened the mood of the group. Bull delighted in needling him for answers about Eleine, none of which Sven had the courage to provide. Not that he knew much, in any case. Dorian’s perplexity only grew as Sven jumped every time he drew close, or opened his mouth. The boy was as skittish as she had always known him to be. 

When Dorian began to grow insulted, she called him over. He trudged along beside her, far less civilised in is gait than he usually was. He petted his moustache. 

“I am not unused to being disliked. Pariah-hood is my preference.” He was defensive, and she could not help but smile. 

“Whatever your faults,” she purred, “I can assure you it is your virtues that are embarrassing him.”

Dorian looked at her. “I know I have many, but perhaps you could be a touch more specific.”

“Oh, Dorian,” she laughed, “so confident in your looks, and yet you cannot tell when someone is attracted to you?”

His head snapped over to look at Sven, some red still on the boy’s cheeks. “Oh.” He grinned. 

“Keep your teasing light,” she warned, “he is young, and far more tender than most his age.”

Dorian gave a regal sniff. “I am afraid I do not know what you mean.” 

“Get,” she ordered. He went, sly smile firmly in place. 

By the time they had made it to the crossroads, unhindered and safe, Sven was clinging to her side, exhausted. She rolled her eyes, letting him slouch against her arm. 

“I am amused to see your physical capabilities have not improved since childhood.” She nodded to the Inquisition soldiers guarding the entry to the camp. Sven could not find the energy to answer, and she shook her head. “Come on, fool.”

In the teens defence, he had had a long day. The sun had long since dipped below the ranges, spilling darkness across the Hinterlands. And he had almost died. Again. She pushed him in front of her, hands steering him by the arms towards Corporate Vale and his training men. Sven moved as sluggish as he possibly could, making her do all the work. She blew out an irritated breath. 

“Spoilt,” she chided. 

He grunted in reply. 

Corporate Vale stood to attention as she drew up beside him. He slapped a fist against his chest, “herald” tumbling from his lips before she could say anything. She gave a nod in return, fighting with Sven to stand still and stop swaying. Bull came up behind her, putting a meaty hand on the boy’s shoulder, stilling him for her. 

“Thanks.” Bull nodded, eyes amused. She addressed Vale. “I have three refugees for you,” she motioned to the other two “Templars” behind her. “Keep them safe. I will be back for them within a few days.” _Hopefully_. 

“Yes, Sir,” Vale looked pleased to be of assistance. 

“And put them to work,” she added in an after-thought. She jabbed a finger at Sven. “Especially this one.” Sven grumbled in reply. 

“Will you be resting here tonight, Herald?” Vale clasped his hands behind his back, chest puffed out. 

“Yes,” she began strolling back down the hill, to that delightful fire she had seen. Her companions trailed after her. “We absolutely will be.” 

It took all of her patience, all of her iron clad will, to sort Sven and his tag-alongs out first, before she sat down and ate. Sven, particularly, took more attention. The boy kept dozing off on the log by the fire, food dropping from his spoon. 

“I am not feeding you,” she snapped, the third time it happened. “Wake up, you fool, and eat your food properly.”

Sven mumbled incoherent words in reply, shovelling another spoonful of Ram gruel into his mouth. Half way through his second spoonful, his eyes glazed, hand tipping. She caught his wrist, steadying the food. 

Dorian and Bull snickered behind her, and she could just picture Solas’ expression of amusement. She sucked on her teeth. Plying the spoon from the boy’s hand, she placed it back in the bowl and set the whole dish aside. Looking behind her, she saw a very similar occurrence playing out with his friends.

She stood, hand balancing Sven. “Come on, you three. To bed.” No one moved. “Now,” she growled, startling them awake. 

They bumbled off to bed, slipping into tents prepared by Corporate Vale. The two boys shared one, and Eleine would be joining the woman later. 

She slumped back down on her own log, fingers massaging her forehead. She looked up to see her companion’s eyes on her. “What?” she snapped. 

Bull grinned. “Just the most affectionate we have ever seen you.”

“Affectionate?” she sneered. 

“Well,” Dorian stretched out a leg, “perhaps that is too strong of a word.”

“We all thought you would burn those Templars the moment you found them.” Bull’s face stilled into something far more serious. 

“Ah.” She saw what this was really about. “Well, spit it out, then.”

“Your experience in the Circle seems to have been undesirable,” Solas soothed, “I am personally surprised you do not harbour lingering resentment towards the order.”

“I do.” She scooped up the rest of her meal. “I will always hate the people that imprisoned me as a child.”

“But?” Dorian prompted. “There is a ‘but’, is there not?”

“ _However_ ,” she snarked, “if there is one thing I have learned, it is that anyone with power can become corrupt. It doesn’t matter to which faction you belong.” She eyed the injured sprawled outside of the healer’s hut. “Templar, Mage, Chantry, or otherwise. Even Tevinter.” She looked at Dorian. “There will be good nestled amongst the bad.”

Solas nodded his head. “I am impressed. You are perhaps wiser than I have previously given you credit for. Forgive me.”

She raised a brow. “Thought me a stupid, stinking human, hm?”

He gave a small smile. “Can you blame me?”

She laughed. “Oh, do not start me, Apostate. How often do you wash those furs, again?”

Solas sniffed, but did not answer. Bull and Dorian joined in the laughter. After a time, Bull piped up again. 

“You seem to like Sven.” She stretched out, her feet skimming the fire. She watched it writhe for a few moments, before answering. 

“I barely know the boy.”

“He appears very attached,” Solas agreed. 

She let a small smile play on her lips. “Idiot boy.” 

Bull guffawed, and they spent the rest of the evening trading barbs, before exhaustion crept into her bones, too. 

She bid goodnight, ignoring their eyes following her. She stuck her head into Sven’s tent to see him snoring, before retreating into her own. The woman was pretending to sleep. Eleine let her.

Sliding into her cot, she turned her back on the mage. 

Sleep took her, washing her under, into a world of dreams. 

 

Sven saw them off in the morning, looking a little lost. She gave in after a few minutes of his beseeching eyes, and threaded her fingers through his hair, swirling his head around.

Sven protested, hands coming up to ply her off his brain. 

“Do as Corporate Vale tells you,” she cautioned, “and do not leave this camp, for any reason, do you hear me?” Sven gave a miserable nod. “If I come back to find out you were difficult, or that you got yourself killed, I will haunt you the rest of your living or dying days.”

Sven finally gave a shaky smile. “I promise.”

“Good.” She wrenched her last buckle tight, turning to join her companions. 

“Eleine?” Sven called. She sighed, looking back at him.

“Yes?” she asked.

“Goodbye,” he said. 

“Goodbye, you fool boy. Behave.” And with that she walked away, expecting Bull, Dorian and Solas to follow. They did, of course, and she knew they were all smirks and snickers. 

“Where’s my pat, mother dearest?” Dorian snorted after a moment. Bull laughed, great chortling booms. She sneered over her shoulder to find Solas smothering chuckles, too. 

“Here, son.” She motioned to Dorian, and he sniggered his way to her side. She raised a palm, smacking the back of his head. Dorian yelped, jumping away from her. Bull laughed even harder, startling a few birds out of their perch in the trees. 

“Brute,” he snapped, smoothing out the hair she had disturbed. 

“You missed a strand,” she retorted. He sneered at her, looking away. 

Eleine felt her muscles complaining as they spent the next hour walking through uneven terrain, picking off wolves, occasional bandits, and wayward apostates. Her rest had recuperated some of her body, but she was still unused to so much activity. Dorian was too, it seemed, but Bull and Solas were unaffected. Much to her irritation and wounded pride. 

“For someone who likes to spend his time sleeping,” she snapped at one point, “you are ridiculously fit.”

Solas smiled at the compliment she had not meant. Before he could reply, with something witty and disparaging, she was sure, the rage of battle reached their ears. 

Eleine’s head snapped up, eyes tracking the grassy rise. Just over the crest, she could see flashes of steel and fire. They ran, and suddenly her muscles were not quite so sore. Blood barrelled through her veins, fire coursing in rapids in her core. 

With each step, the ground below flashed away, and they were bounding up the battered path, coming upon chaos. 

Sweet, sweet chaos. 

To their utter astonishment, and Bull’s joyful whoop, fending off two rage demons, was a Qunari archer. 

Eleine quelled her fire, not letting her shudder at the rage demons be seen by her comrades. Solas sprang into action first, a hail of stones raining down on the beasts. Dorian caught them in his cage of lightning, and Bull charged in, slamming his great hammer into their sides. She waved her staff, feeling her mana strain, and ice erupted from beneath the lava corpses. They screeched, writhing as spikes protruded from their bodies. Bull pounded them and lightning arched through their torn bodies. They erupted, splattering the clearing with goo and hot substances she did not want to know the name of. 

She whipped around to Solas, scraping off something horrid smelling from her cheek. “Really, Solas?” The apostate just smiled, untouched. Dorian grumbled to her side.

“As much as I enjoy a good display of power, I also agree that that was an unnecessary flair.” The man flicked off gunk from his fingers. 

Bull had already hunkered to the Qunari’s side, helping him stand. Eleine walked over, intrigued. 

“Oh, great. Another great beast,” Dorian muttered at her side. Just out of earshot of Solas and Bull, she whispered into Dorian’s ear.

“Says the man who could not stop eyeing that great beast’s ass.” Dorian flustered, looking at her with wide eyes. She grinned, winking. 

As they reached Bull, Eleine was somewhat shocked by the stranger’s appearance. A single horn, malformed and wretched, protruded from the left side of his skull. It was gnarled and chipped, and there was no evidence of there ever being another horn on his head. He was possessed of by far softer features than those that cut into Bull’s face, and she wondered if her image of the Qunari had been skewed by Bull’s form. Because the one before her stood at least a head shorter than Bull, and less fleshed out in those spectacular muscles Bull sported.

She shook her head. There were as varied looking Qunari as she was sure there were humans. 

“Well,” she lilted, “who do we have here, Bull?”

The archer seemed to see her for the first time. His mouth slackened, eyes widening. Not a reaction she was unused to, but she grew suspicious at the flittering recognition in his eyes. 

“Tamoren,” Bull gruffed, wide grin on his face. 

“A friend of yours?” Dorian sniped. Bull frowned.

“Were you familiar with that Vint I impaled?” Eleine snapped. Dorian sobered, eyes regretful. 

Still, this Tamoren stared. Eleine rose a brow, cocking her hip. 

“I never thought I’d meet you…” he said. His voice was of a mellower cadence than Bull’s. She found she liked it better. 

Eleine smirked. “I promise I’m as far from a holy bride as possible.”

Tamoren stilled, eyes wary on her face. “No… I didn’t mean that.”

Eleine gave an idle swing of her staff. “Oh, you heard of me as something other than the Herald?”

Tamoren cleared his throat. “No.”

“It is unusual for a Qunari to be here, is it not Bull?” Solas eyed Tamoren.

Bull’s smile did not let up. “Nah, this one here isn’t from Par Vollen.”

“How can you tell?” Dorian asked, scanning the man for any signs.

“My accent, I assume?” Tamoren queried. Bull nodded, great horns bobbing. Tamoren looked back at Eleine. “I was abandoned as a child and raised by farmers in the Free Marches.” 

At this, something gave her pause. “Familiar with the Trevelyans?”

“In name only,” he smiled. She relaxed. 

“We like our name,” she replied, “my father especially.”

“There was never any doubt in my mind that the occupants of that estate were exceptional.” Tamoren righted himself, sending a thankful look to Bull, but his eyes returned to her in a matter of seconds. “But I am still surprised by your ferocity.” Eleine swayed closer, keen eyes flitting over his face. She did not recognise him, but she had the feeling that he recognised her. 

It was clear he had neither the constitution to be a Qunari spy, nor the abilities. “Not a fighter.” She eyed his grip on his bow. Lax, unpractised. 

Tamoren gave a wry smile. “No. Not by choice.”

She rose a brow, circling him. He turned to follow her movements. “From the look in your eyes you have more of a story than just necessity.”

At this his brow pulled down in misery. She stopped stalking, intrigued. “I was separated from my… friend, when the—“ he looked up at the rent sky, “I heard wind of him having made it to Redcliffe with the other mages. I came but…” 

Eleine nodded. “Not in Redcliffe?”

Tamoren hunched his broad shoulders. “No.” The sound was squeezed out of him. Sorrow and fear all in one word. 

“A portion of mages secreted back with me the first time I visited the hell hole,” she said, hand resting on her hip, “what is his or her name?”

A look of hope hedged its way into his eyes. “Clemence. Tranquil Clemence.”

Both of her brows rose now, and she turned back to shoot a surprised look at Solas and Dorian. Their expressions mirrored hers. 

“Yeah we got ‘im, right, Boss?” Bull hooked his hammer onto its sheath on his back. 

Tamoren started, bow dropping. “You do?”

Eleine nodded. “And you are very lucky. Alexius was massacring the Tranquil. That I came upon him when I did was a close thing.”

“You took him in…” Tamoren bore his eyes into her. “Why?”

She swung in close to him, feeling increasingly diminutive the closer she got. “Perhaps you are more familiar with the Trevelyans than you insisted?”

He stared back, hard, unmoved. “No. But it is few that would show kindness or provide sanctuary to a Tranquil.”

She left him beneath her stare for a few more moments. Turning, she made her way back down the incline, to return to the road to Redcliffe. “Even fewer,” she called, “that would fall in love with one.”

Her companions trotted after her, eyes plastered on the strange Qunari. Tamoren hurried after them. “Please, I must see him.”

“Go to the Inquisition camp at the crossroads and speak to Corporate Vale. Ask him this: _A sparrow or crow?_ and he will provide you with transport to Haven.” Eleine swivelled, watching as a sheen of tears gathered in Tamoren’s eyes. “And if I return to find you have caused trouble, no matter how small, _both_ you and Clemence will be out on your asses.” 

“Thank you… Eleine Trevelyan.”


	3. Temper My Violence

Sweat ran down her back between her shoulder blades. Her arms cut through the air, her staff spewing forth fire and filling the room with such confusion. There were screams and grunts and yowls all around her, but she focused only on the mage before her. That fucking Vint, with his colourful cowl and sharp features. 

A roiling mass of ice splintered across the ground towards her, and she slammed the blade of her staff between the crack of two stones. A barrier sprung up around her, shimmering with her fire based mana. The ice melted before it could make it even a metre within her vicinity. 

The smirk wiped off the rat’s face. She licked her lips, a malicious grin slashing across her own. Her mana snaked across the ground, laying traps of glyphs and runes in a circle around him. His right leg shout out, stamping down in what would have been a very impressive stream of ice magic. 

His leg suffused with flame and he screamed as the tendrils licked their way up his body. She pressed her advantage, whipping her staff in front of her, side, side, and thrust. Three roaring blaze serpents shot towards him. A harried wave of his hand smothered his leg, and he raised his other just in time to erect a barrier, her flame puppets glancing off to dissipate in the air around him. He limped with far more caution now, glancing around the area she had spoiled. 

He looked into her eyes, and she looked into his. Wild panic shone in his irises. He whipped around, making to jump over the area she had trapped. He was running.

Coward Venatori. 

She stamped her foot, felt her mana surge, and she lit the ground before him. A wall of flame, pounding, searing heat, had him scrambling back. Trapped between her flames either way he turned, he fell into his stance.

But she was having none of that. His barrier was only a foot tall, a flickering, weak thing, when she raised her staff. 

Her shoulder muscles clenched, her arm arcing back. With all of her strength, all of her speed, she flung her staff, blade careening for his throat. He did not have time to scream, nor time to duck.

With the force of her throw he slapped back against the ground, staff embedded in his flesh. She watched his blood seep from him for a few quiet moments. She strode to him, releasing her glyphs on the ground and relaxing upon the return of mana. 

The battle finished around her, her companions making quick work of the remaining shades and Venatori archers. Dorian picked his way to her amidst the smoke and corpses. 

They hovered above the Venatori. Eleine ripped the blade of her staff out of the Vint’s throat, delighting in his gurgle. Dorian eyed the dying man with disgust. “I must say, you are not a woman who handles her anger well.”

Eleine stepped over the stilling body, rounding on Dorian. “No.” She wiped at some blood on her cheek. “I’m not.” 

The Altus smoothed out his moustache and said nothing, eyes pinioned on her dirtied armour. Solas floated up behind her, rummaging through the mage’s clothes. He withdrew the crystal key, a few potions and a tome of possible interest. 

“Let us hope you don’t have time to read that,” she said, prowling out of the dank room with Leliana close behind. 

“Agreed,” Solas returned. Dorian joined them, fetching the key from Solas and spinning it between his tanned fingers. They reached the corridor that lead to the hall. Dorian pocketed the key, and Bull lumbered to their side. 

“Everyone ready for the cesspool of demons?” Eleine inquired, receiving varying levels of enthusiasm. She met Leliana’s wretched gaze. The tattered canvas of her face made worse the hollow hate in her eyes. 

Eleine was going to take that as a definite yes. 

She wasted no more time – oh, that vile word – in slamming her way through the door. Within instants they were accosted. Screeching terrors after flailing shades descended upon them. Flies to a carcass. 

Bull hefted his great hammer, pivoting on his right foot, before barrelling into the demons, a whirlwind of muscle and stone. Eleine followed Bull on swift and sure feet, her staff thrust to her side, readied. 

Leliana released volley of arrows after volley of arrows, their accuracy sending delight through Eleine as they skimmed past her to bury in hulking shades. 

Eleine let her mana tumble from her, the fade answering its call, turning the world into the storm of ice and fire she conjured in her mind. A hail of rocks and invisible hands punctured the swelling ranks around her, and it was soon joined by rivers of chain lightening. 

The walls and vaulted ceiling trembled as her group dispatched with the demons. Eleine found herself thankful again she had had the forethought to utilise so many mages. She relished in being able to be in the thick of it without contention with the warriors.

Cassandra and Blackwall always tried to shove her behind their shields, keep her away, keep her safe. 

But there was no pleasure quite like being only one step ahead of death, facing the contorted appearances of her enemies with but a brief space of air between them. Standing above their fallen bodies, with their allies in no doubt she had destroyed them. 

It was an indulgence she had learned young. 

Her fire was growing wild, now. Spilling from her, striking out unbridled, and casting the world into hues of oranges and reds. The heat tingled along her skin, warming something that had grown cold within her over the years. Since those dark days in the circle, when it had been nothing but her and her rage. 

A shade reared up beside her, its tapered claws curving for her head. She found that mounting heat within her, and breathed it out. Ash coated her mouth and nose, and she savoured the sensation. The shade shuddered before her, writhing in silent agony, as she boiled its insides. 

Its body bubbled and split but she barely felt it splatter across her. 

There was such a raging noise in her head, it took many moments for her to realise it was silent within the hall. Her flames consumed debris on the floor, eating away at the corpses and goo with such alacrity there was nothing but a coating of ash left within seconds. 

Her companions said nothing, but she felt their eyes on her. Leliana’s, sharper than those arrows she fetched. Eleine paid them no heed; there was only one concern singing in her blood. 

And that was an evisceration of Alexius, the man who had tipped the world into ruin. 

“Dorian.” She held out her hand, eyes scouring the ash haze for the man. He appeared, sodden with goo and bearing a look of disquiet in his eyes. He handed over the keys without a word, eyes on the black floor around them.

Eleine stalked to the door, body stiff and taut with anger.

She had not had the courage to ask what had happened to Sven here, in this time. After saving him twice, she had no intention of letting that boy die, ever. 

Solas shadowed her every move, a hunkering beast that would not let its prey out of sight. Since the moment they had been reacquainted in this hell of a future, he had had a peculiar look in his eyes. 

The elaborate door loomed before her, and with brittle fingers she shoved the appropriate keys in their holes. That click as it released the lock, was one of the best sounds to have ever fallen upon her ears. 

It swung open, and she sauntered in, right hand tight over her staff. Alexius did not turn as they entered, and she spared a second to look at the creature huddled at his side. Some other manifestation of his depravity, she was sure. 

“I’m glad I did not get you that fruit basket,” Eleine slandered, “you have not been a very gracious host, Alexius.” 

“I knew you would appear again,” he replied, and she delighted in the defeat hazing his voice, “not that it would be now. But I knew that I hadn’t destroyed you.” She saw him pitch his head down, voice growing haggard. “My final failure.” Eleine fingered the lyrium potion within her right pouch, uncorking it. 

Dorian drew up beside her. “Was it worth it,” he agonised, “everything you did to the world, to yourself?”

“It doesn’t matter now,” Alexius returned, “all we can do is wait… for the end.”

“It does matter,” Eleine snapped, “I will undo this.” She stalked towards him, tipping the contents of the potion down her throat. Her magic blazed.

He did not give any reaction to her advance. “How many times have I tried? The past cannot be undone.” He raised his head again, his frame outlined by the flames before him. “All that I fought for, all that I betrayed, and what have I wrought? Ruin and death. There is nothing else. The Elder one comes for me, for you, for us all.” 

Eleine froze as Leliana appeared beside Alexius, blade thrust against the creature’s throat. She shuddered.

Horrors of all horrors; it was Felix. 

“Felix—“ Alexius reached out, terror drawing across his grizzled face. Leliana tightened her hold, threatening. Dorian shook behind her, walking forwards as if in a trance.

“That’s Felix?” He sounded breathless, voice thin. Anger boiled that weak cadence to something far more ferocious. “Maker’s breath Alexius, what have you done?” 

“He would have _died_ , Dorian. I saved him.” Eleine recoiled, revulsion quickening through her. That was no salvation. There was nothing but misery on every line of that creature. “Please—“ Alexius begged, voice thin, “don’t hurt my son. I’ll do anything you ask.”

Eleine shook her head at the tears in his voice. “You didn’t save him, Alexius,” she snapped, “no one should live like that.” Eleine met Leliana’s eyes. She wanted no bargain with Alexius, no easy way out. 

She wanted his blood beneath her feet, and his skin peeling off into ash flakes. 

And she would never deny Leliana her retribution.

Leliana ripped the blade across Felix’s withered throat, and a spurt of black blood splattered across the floor. 

Alexius hobbled to his dead son. “No…” he muttered, his face drawing in horror. He spasmed. _“No!”_

And Leliana flew across the room, slapping across the floor. 

Eleine cupped her hands, staff being held by one finger. Just as Alexius turned to them, demented and vengeful, she clapped her palms together. The fire place behind him surged, splitting in half and cocooning him within the blistering heat. 

Alexius screamed, his staff waving a vague sight behind the revolving fire. He managed to erect his barrier and suffuse some of the flames, but once he appeared from them, he was a mess of blisters and bubbles, with no eyebrows, nor hair, nor many clothes. He stumbled toward them, blood gushing to the ground from deep burns and tattered flesh. 

The smell was nothing she was unused to, but Dorian gagged beside her. 

One of Leliana’s arrows pierced Alexius’ throat before he finished the spell he had started, and the mage lurched, legs giving out beneath him. Bull rushed past her, hefting up his hammer, and smashing it down upon Alexius’ head. 

Eleine smirked. Bull also needed vengeance, it seemed. 

Dorian drooped beside her as the hall fell into quiet, his eyes on the destroyed Alexius. The Altus dropped by his mentor’s side, face shadowed with misery. 

He looked up at Eleine, and she hid her growing smile. “He wanted to die, didn’t he? All those lies he told himself, the justifications…” his voice broke, “he lost Felix long ago—“ he stood up abruptly. “And he didn’t even notice.” He hung his head, and she felt a tickling pity for Dorian. “Oh, Alexius.”

Still, she could not pretend to be sad, nor regret what had to be done with Alexius. 

After all, this was merely a prequel to what she would do to that man when they got back.

“Mourn the broken man later, Dorian. He’s not dead yet.” She was amused that he seemed to perk up at her words. She had not offered comfort. She had warned him. 

Dorian held out his hand to her, revealing that wretched amulet. “This is the same amulet he used before. I think it’s the same one we made in Minrathous,” He eyed it, “that’s a relief. Give me an hour to work out the spell he used and I should be able to reopen the rift.” Impatience bloomed in her stomach, and was mirrored in Leliana’s stalk as she descended upon them. 

“An hour?” she exclaimed, “that’s impossible! You must go now.” 

Now, indeed. 

The floor rumbled, an earthquake hailing dirt and debris from the ceiling down onto them. And a screech, so loud, so unearthly, deafened their ears. Eleine shuddered as she spread her legs in a desperate attempt to stabilise herself.

“The Elder One,” Leliana cursed. 

Eleine watched as Solas and Bull nodded to each other, eyes resigned but stoked with determination. She felt her heart sink a little. She had known from the beginning that they would not be coming through with them, but leaving her allies to die was never something she had intended to experience. 

“We’ll head out front,” Bull rumbled, voice addled, “keep them off your tail.”

She gave a sharp nod. Her eyes spoke of her promise to make that man suffer, and her companions looked somewhat appeased. Solas eyed her, his expression one attributed to a man trying to sort out a puzzle. She ignored him. 

“Cast your spell,” Leliana intoned, turning on her heel, “you have as much time as I have arrows.” Eleine put her hand on Dorian’s arm, and they hurried further back into the room. 

Eleine tempered her violence as she watched the door close behind Solas and Bull. Soon, she would have Alexius cowering at her feet. 

Leliana nocked an arrow and drew her bow. “Though darkness closes,” the spymaster spat, “I am shielded by flame.” 

The doors burst open, and Eleine could not look away from the massacre. 

The last thing she saw before green light eclipsed her world, was Leliana, slashed through the middle by a gnarled terror. 

She was cloaked in ash, the swirling currents parting around her as she prowled to Alexius. 

“You’ll have to do better than that,” Dorian snarked. 

Alexius fell to his knees, and she crouched before him, delighting in the crushed expression on his face. “Is that the best you’ve got?” she taunted, vile glee dripping from her every word.

“You’ve won,” Alexius shuddered, “there is no point extending this charade.” He looked to his son, but if there was one thing she was certain of, it was that she would never allow him to lay his eyes on what he loved so much again. 

She fisted her hand in his disgusting hood, and shot to her feet, knee rearing up to slam into his face. The room surged around her, her companions shouting in shock. Alexius spasmed beneath her, and she threw him to the floor. 

Fire sparked off her staff’s crystal, and she felt the burn of it in the back of her throat. 

How should she do it? Boil his blood? Or perhaps just his eyeballs first? 

Felix made to grab her, but she whirled around, foot burying into the boy’s abdomen, and sending him tumbling back. No one, not one person was getting in the way of her making this worm pay. 

She raised her staff, blade gleaming with her warped reflection, and she made to bring it down, to release a volley of flames that would leave the Magister nothing but a smear of black on the ground. 

Solas caught her thrust, possessed of a strength she had not expected. He hissed in her ear. “Is this how you will act with the power given to you?” 

She snapped her head around, eyes blazing. “He deserves to die.” 

Solas tightened his hold on her arm. “So this is what the Inquisition will be? Executioners above the law?” 

Frustration mounted in her as his sense needled its way into her. “He is a threat that must be eliminated now,” she growled. She met Leliana’s eyes, and for once felt they agreed on something.

Solas drew up close to her, his voice harsh and ragged. “But that is not why you want to commit the deed, is it?” 

Something shattered in her, and she wrenched her arm away from Solas. She rounded on two Inquisition guards. “Take him,” she barked, gesticulating to the cowering Alexius. 

Solas looked a mixture of relieved and bewildered. She rounded on the room, anger and violence still thudding through her veins. She felt it thrash from her in waves, silencing the chamber. Leliana made to stride to her, no doubt to incur a lengthy discussion of the events she missed. 

She stilled at the sound of marching feet. That clap of metal on stone that she detested. The room turned to watch, wary, the ranks of soldiers swarming into the hall, lining the sides and dominating the offense. The moved in tandem, their feet a beat of warning she to this day recoiled from. 

A man coalesced from the entry, his voice a concoction of booming power and sarcasm. “Grand Enchanter. Imagine how surprised I was to learn how you had given away Redcliffe castle to a Tevinter magister.” Eleine let out a breath. 

“King Alistair—” Fiona appealed, contrition leaking from her. 

“Especially since I’m fairly sure Redcliffe belongs to Arl Teagan.” His voice bit Fiona to the wick, Eleine was sure. She watched, amused, as the woman scrambled to reply, fear and a brand of desperation making her hands shake. 

“Your Majesty,” she halted, “we never intended—“

“I know what you intended,” he scathed, and she found something becoming in his voice. She could get used to hearing that. She thought of Cullen’s mellow cadence, and quickly changed her mind. “I wanted to help you,” Alistair sympathised, “but you’ve made it impossible.” He shook his head, flickering regret in his eyes. “You and your followers are no longer welcome in Ferelden.”

“But—“ Fiona lamented, “we have hundreds who need protection, where will we go?”

As entertaining as it was for her to watch the stupid woman flounder, it was time for her to play her hand. She sauntered down the dial steps to the Enchanter and King. “Surely you have not forgotten, Enchanter, the need I have of you and your mages?”

Fiona’s brow pulled together. “And what are the terms of this arrangement?” Oh, so she thought to question such matters _now_. 

Dorian seemed to agree with her. “Hopefully better than what Alexius gave you,” he snarked. Dorian looked to Eleine, eyes wary. “The Inquisition is better than that... yes?” She battled with the shrug she wanted to give. 

“They have lost all possible supporters,” Solas advised, “the Inquisition is their only remaining chance for freedom.” She bit back her reply that she knew this well enough. 

Fiona caved before Eleine had to respond. “It seems we have little choice but to accept whatever you offer.”

Eleine wouldn’t lie, that was a nice thing to hear. “We would be _honoured_ ,” she said, sardonic to her core, “to have you fight as allies by the Inquisitions side.”

Fiona looked relieved, no matter Eleine’s tone of voice. “I pray that the rest of the Inquisition honours your promise, then.”

She had one last thing to say, however. “But you can be sure, Fiona, that any further dealings with Magisters, will result in your immediate termination. This world has been damaged enough by your stupidity.” The Enchanter lowered her head, shame a terrible thing on her face. “The breach threatens all of Thedas,” Eleine continued, far more serious now, “we cannot afford to be divided now.” Grudging, and the words tasting like shit in her mouth, she finished. “We can’t fight it without you. Any chance of success requires your full support.” She wondered how much ash it would take to soap out that terrible statement. 

“I’d take that offer, if I were you,” King Alistair interjected, “one way or another, you’re leaving my Kingdom.”

Fiona took a moment of silence to steady herself. She met Eleine’s eyes, resolve hardening in her green gaze. “We accept. It would be madness not to.” 

“Yes,” Eleine agreed, “it would be.”

“I will gather my people,” Fiona continued, wheels already turning in her head, “and ready them for the journey to Haven.” She smiled. “The breach will be closed. You will not regret giving us this chance.”

Give her one minute with Vivienne explaining the rebel mages would be joining them, and Eleine was sure she would. 

 

Eleine found the closer they came to the Crossroads, the more this worry began niggling at her. Unbidden came images of a certain fool boy. A hundred possibilities of his demise tumbled through her mind. 

Though she had been taciturn since their departure from Redcliffe, she was growing irritated as they finally met the dirt road that snaked to the Crossroads. Her companions had withdrawn from her, and she was grateful for the space to try and combat the noise in her head. 

She noticed her legs taking larger steps, her feet springing over rocks rather than travel around. 

The Crossroads were in sight. 

Miniscule details growing sharper and larger every second. Blood pumped in her ears, and her stomach clenched in a way she was not used to. 

Her companions and the army of mages forgotten, she had one focus. 

She jogged past the soldiers guarding the eastern entry to the crossroads, disinterested in hailing back. People swarmed around, milling in her way and bringing her to the point of anger. She withheld the arms that wanted to push them out of the way and settled for scanning the area as thoroughly as she could. 

She could not see his freckled face anywhere. 

She _could_ see him rent, torn and hurt, somewhere no one would find him. Alone and dying. Eleine shoved the phantoms away. Cresting the hill to Corporate Vale’s post, her face flushed with relief as Sven stumbled past with a barrel of supplies. 

She sucked in a deep breath, feeling a weakness pour through her limbs. 

Sven look up just as she made to turn away. “Eleine!” She froze, the desire to hide pounding in her heart. Before she could, the boy was dropping the barrel, inconsiderate of the produce within, and hurrying to her. 

He pulled up short before her, and she found herself mired in perhaps one of the most awkward moments of her twenty-eight years. Neither one knew how to greet the other, and Eleine struggled with her feelings of relief at seeing him. She refused to be attached to the boy. Especially one so prone to getting himself into situations he could not get out of. 

But, he was perhaps the only part of her past she did not hate nor fear.

Sven fiddled with his fingers and she smiled. 

“I thought I would find you asleep in some shady alcove somewhere,” she teased. “Grown out of your bad habits now that the order has fallen to pieces?” 

Sven grinned. “It’s a work and you eat deal here.”

“Ahh,” Eleine laughed, “that explains the determination on your face.” 

“So what happened? Did you save anyone?” Sven blurted, eagerness carved into every line of his face. 

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, you know. Just the whole world. Nothing unusual.” 

“That’s for sure.” Sven beamed.

Eleine held back a hurl. “Shut up, Sven.” She grabbed his head, messing with his wayward hair. 

Sven flailed beneath her hand, making far too much noise than was necessary. Especially considering his weak attempts to ply her fingers from his hair. 

She relaxed with the contact with him. That future was not her future.

Not his.

She would make sure of that.


	4. A Question of Loyalty

Eleine eyed Sven. “Are you sure you’re not upset your friends didn’t want to come?” 

Sven shot her a look, stomping through the snow. “Yes.” He might as well have crossed his arms and pouted, for all the petulance leaking from him. Bull chuckled by her left, and she was sure Dorian and Solas wore matching expressions. 

The mage army trudged and complained in scores behind them.

Sven rounded on her. “Did you know Joy was a mage?” 

Eleine sighed. “Yes, Sven, I did. But you know that’s not why she wanted to stay, don’t you?” Sven looked away, hiding his eyes. “Stupid boy, you’re as observant as a blind man.” She marched over to him, hooking a finger in his armour and yanking him away from a snowdrift he almost fell in. “She was smitten with Corporate Vale.” 

Sven flailed before righting himself, eyes wide on her face. “But she’s only known him two days.” 

She didn’t know what to say to that. Dorian piped up from behind her. “Ah, the fancies of the young.”

Sven sniffed. “I’m not like that.”

Eleine laughed. “Forgotten all about Mathias, Harl and Lea, have you?” 

Sven flushed, shushing her. He whipped around, checking if anyone heard. “Shut up, Eleine!”

She snorted. “Yes, yes.” She tracked to whitening landscape around them. Chips of black rock interrupted the smooth strokes of snow, and shards of green pine tapered to points on their left. 

“Eleine?” Sven mumbled.

She looked at his hanging head. “Yes, Sven?”

“Why didn’t Mea want to come?”

She saw that man’s haunted eyes. “I don’t think your friend knows what he wants.”

Sven caught her eyes, a shimmer of hope in his. “Do you think he might come one day?”

Eleine rolled her neck, cracking past some of the tension there. “Neither of us know him well enough to make such guesses.” She thought it would be a miracle if he was alive within the next few weeks. 

They rounded a curve in the road and nestled amongst the landscape, was the sprawling Inquisition camp. Haven. She felt some of the tension drain from her stride. They were almost home now.

She could not tell if Sven joining them had made the two-week trip worse, or better. It was amusing to watch Bull and Dorian mess with him, but the clamouring of the mage army had almost ruined whatever good mood she had gained from it. She avoided Fiona as much as possible, not in the least interested in appeasing the woman. Solas took on that role well, a mixture of sympathy and understanding. 

Eleine would quite honestly prefer bathing in demon goo than listening to that woman moan. 

Sven gave a surreptitious sniff beside her. She rolled her eyes. He had known the people all of what, a few weeks? And he was crying over their parting. She cast her eyes to the vibrant sky, eyes tracing that seam where blue melded with green, and green delved into black. She wondered what it would be like to get attached to others in such an easy manner. 

Snow began falling, crystalline flakes tumbling through the air in slow circles. 

Her mouth curved in a wicked grin. She saw Solas raise his brow at her expression to her right. She winked at him, raising a finger to her lips.

Blowing heat on her finger tips, she snuck up behind Sven, her open palm to the sky above them. Her mana strained to temper its use, keeping the flames within but drawing out their heat. 

A drop of warm water splattered on Sven’s head. The boy did not notice, and she held in her laughter as she increased the heat. And then there was a great downpour, soaking Sven and her arm, as she melted the falling snow above him. The boy shouted in shock, arms flailing above his head. She crowed, laughing harder than she had in years. 

Sven whirled on her as she folded at the waist, chest hurting with each peal of her laughter. With his hair plastered to his head and his mouth hanging open, he was a picture of betrayal and she could not help but laugh harder. 

“Eleine!” he cried, and she heard Bull and Dorian join in with her. When Sven gave a shiver, and she saw the water on his skin begin to cool to ice, she grabbed his head, pulling him to her side. She ignored his protests and she blew hot air on him, drying him off.

She snorted as he wrenched out of her grip, hand trying to style his hair. She fixed him with a stern eye. “No more ‘poor me’, Sven. There’s no place for that in the Inquisition.” 

Though they made the rest of the journey in silence, she could tell Sven had rallied himself past his self-pity. 

As they drew close to the gates of Haven, Bull and Solas tapered off to greet their respective acquaintances, and Eleine caught sight of her Advisors huddled by Cullen’s ground. Oh, the expression on his face as he saw the multitudinous lines of free mages. 

“Well,” she muttered to herself, “this will be fun.”

“Will it?” Sven asked, and she cursed under her breath. She heard Dorian trail behind them, and was sure there was some form of amusement leaking from him. 

She strode on ahead of the two, joined in instants by Leliana, who had materialised from maker knew where. 

“Spymaster,” she acknowledged.

“I sent a report ahead of the events you detailed,” the woman returned. 

Relief flickered in Eleine’s stomach. She had not wanted to tell that story twice. “Good.”

The moment she stepped up beside Cassandra, who gave her a nod of recognition, Cullen spouted in furious words. 

“It is not a matter for debate,” he snapped, “there will be abominations amongst the mages and we must be prepared.” Eleine could not argue, the man was not entirely wrong. 

“If we rescind the offer of an alliance it makes the Inquisition appear incompetent at best, tyrannical at worst,” Josephine argued, brows drawn over her kohl lined eyes. Eleine tried to make herself small, she wanted no part in this discussion. 

Cullen rounded on her. “What were you thinking?” She never knew why she bothered. “Turning mages loose with no oversight?” Eleine tempered her reaction to that word. _Oversight_. Animals to be herded, they were. She wanted to ask him if that was what he thought of her. “The veil is torn open,” he continued.

She sucked on her teeth. “Give them their freedom for now,” she replied, “and if they prove later they can’t handle it, impose restrictions.” Surely this will satisfy the Templar. 

“And how many lives will be lost if they fail?” Cullen began, voice heated, “With the veil broken…” he halted at the storming expression on her face, quietening. “The threat of possession—“ he turned to Cassandra, appealing with his eyes. “Seeker?” 

Cassandra took a breath, eyes on Eleine’s face. “While I may not completely agree with the decision, I support it.” To say Eleine was shocked would be insufficient. “The sole point of the Herald’s mission was to gain the mages aid and that was accomplished.”

Cullen looked away, eyes heavy on the milling mages. 

Dorian piped up behind them. “The voice of pragmatism speaks. And here I was just starting to enjoy the circular arguments.” Eleine and her advisors turned to place him under very unamused looks. Maker, could the man sound any smugger? 

Cassandra continued as if she had not heard him. “Closing the breach is all that matters.”

On that note. “Closing the breach will require a lot of magic, and that means lyrium.” She rolled her shoulders, eyes unable to meet Cullen’s. Instead she looked to Leliana. “I have contacts.”

“‘Contacts’ meaning smugglers?” The spymaster seemed amused. “Send them word. We need every advantage.”

Eleine sighed, already regretting haven spoken up. Just as she knew he would be, Cullen rankled. “We have legitimate lyrium supply lines already.” 

“And they don’t need to hear of this,” Leliana dismissed. 

“Keep it under the table,” Josephine warned, “and I’ll do what I can to quiet rumours.”

She nodded. Fortunately keeping things away from the eyes of the public was something she was more than used to.

“We should look into the things you saw in this dark future,” Leliana worried, “the assassination of Empress Celene? A demon army?”

Dorian swung up beside them, “Sounds like something a Tevinter cult might do. Orlais falls, the Imperium rises. Chaos for everyone!” Eleine rolled her eyes. 

“Joy,” she snarked. 

“One battle at a time.” Cullen looked to the breach, “It’s going to take time to organise our troops and the mage recruits.” He sighed. “Let’s take this to the war room.” He met her eyes, voice far more appreciative than it had been minutes previous. “Join us,” he invited, “none of this means anything without your mark, after all.”

She was pleased his voice had returned to that cadence. “And I’d hoped to sit out the assault on the breach,” she lilted, sarcasm dripping from her every word, “take a nap, maybe go for a walk.” _Or a bath_. 

Cullen gave her a sideways smile. “What is it they say? ‘No rest for the wicked.’”

And she was wicked, alright. 

Dorian leaned against his staff. “I’ll skip the war council, but I would like to see this breach up close, if you don’t mind.”

She rose a brow. “Then you’re staying?”

“Oh, didn’t I mention? The south is so charming and rustic, I adore it to little pieces,” Dorian smirked. 

She rolled her eyes. “There’s no one I’d rather be stranded in time with. Future or present.”

“Do try and temper that sarcastic tongue of yours? But excellent choice.” Dorian gave a regal wave, sauntering off to converse with the hulking Bull. 

“I’ll begin preparations to march on the summit, maker willing the mages will be enough to grant us victory,” Cullen concluded. 

“Before that merry jig,” Eleine addressed Cullen, motioning to the awkward Sven behind her, “I have brought you a Templar recruit.” 

Sven gave a little wave, and Cullen smiled at the boy. He opened his mouth but Eleine felt it prudent she elaborated.

“Neither skilled in combat nor adept in anything the order taught.”

Sven sniffed, but did not argue.

“Have you taken your first vial of lyrium?” Cullen asked, face serious. 

Sven shook his head. “No, I was held back.”

“He was the worst recruit they had gotten in over twenty years, I heard.” Eleine smirked. Sven looked not at all sorry. “But I’m sure there is something you can find for him.” 

Cullen approached the boy and placed a hand on his shoulder, eyes gentle. “I promise you, you will come to no harm here.” His eyes tracked the trudge of the mages pouring into Haven. Eleine smiled. She wondered what it would have been like for her, to see an army of unchecked Templars infest her home. Fiona began trudging her way to them, and stood beside Leliana, hands behind her back. 

Eleine ignored her. 

Sven followed Cullen’s eyes, and gave a bright grin. “Nah,” he said, “I’m not scared of mages anymore.”

“Oh?” Leliana clasped her hands behind her back. “Anymore?”

“Well that whole Circle Horror thing was bad but after Eleine—“ 

“’Circle Horror’?” Cullen cut him off, taken aback. A hand crept up her spine, stone fingers clutching her heart. 

Sven looked at her, panicked. “Why does no one know?”

She shook her head, a storm brewing in her stomach. “I don’t know, Sven.” 

Josephine lowered her clipboard. “Was this during the rebellion?”

“No,” Eleine said, voice tight. She felt her fingers ache, and only just realised how tight they clasped her arms. Gently, gently, she returned to a laxer hold. She snuck a glance at Leliana. 

The blood mabari had not missed it.

“I am sure you would know, if that were the case,” Leliana drawled.

“I assure you, I do.” Eleine felt her hackles rising. This was not a conversation she wanted to have. 

She should have left Sven when she found him. 

Cullen looked down, something fliting across his face she did not recognise. Sven, the fool, looked confused, eyes flitting form one stiff person to the next. 

“What?” He asked at last, unable to temper himself for a moment longer.

Fiona looked bemused at the young Templar. “The Spymaster was asking if Eleine was a part of the rebellion in her circle.”

“Eleine did not rebel,” Sven exclaimed. Eleine closed her eyes. Maker, when would she be rid of this boy. She definitely should have left him. Cullen’s head whipped up, eyes boring into her face. Leliana’s eyes sharpened and Eleine knew she was delighting upon this revelation. “She was helping us—“

“What Sven is articulating poorly,” she chewed out, “is that I did not turn on the Templars.”

“More than that!” Sven’s cheeks were growing red. “Why are you lying?” She took a step towards him, getting angry herself. 

“I am not lying—“

“You are!” She was shocked. This was perhaps the first time she had ever seen Sven argue with someone. Certainly, not someone such as her. Sven turned to Cullen, who was awkward on his feet, eyes wary on the both of them.

Dorian, Bull and Solas joined them, drawn to the commotion. 

“She saved me, saved us—“ Sven blurted, arm swiping down in the air. “It was chaos, and everyone forgot about the recruits, about the children, except for Eleine.” 

Eleine felt embarrassment colour her cheeks. “Shut your mouth,” she snarled in Sven’s face. “Shut up, now.”

Sven’s face drained of blood, but his eyes remained furious. “No,” he trembled, “no. I do not know why you are denying it, but you saved my life, saved so many lives— I will not let the world think less of you than what you are!”

She reeled back the hand that wanted to slap him, kept it safe in a closed fist around her arm. He had no idea the kind of person she was.

No idea, the things she had done. 

Otherwise he would not be saying things like this. As if it _redeemed_ her. As if she was _good_. 

“Just what is going on?” Dorian exclaimed. Cullen shook his head, as confused as the rest. 

“Eleine is telling fibs.” Eleine reeled back with stupefied rage. Fibs? _Fibs?_ Maker, could the boy be more of a boy? 

“I am not,” she snapped. “Stop being ridiculous, Sven. Since when did you speak so much, in any case?”

The boy coloured. “Since you started lying.” Eleine let out a ragged breath.

Sven rounded on Cullen, who’s brows were raised in complete perplexity. “They were all fighting everywhere, Mages on Templars, Mages on Mages, Templars on Templars. And we couldn’t get out. The younger ones were too scared— they were hiding.”

“Yes,” she interjected snidely, “you were.”

Though Sven halted, he ignored her. “And then Eleine came in, and she led us out.”

“Yes,” she snapped, “very interesting story. Now get inside, Sven. For once, just manage what you are ordered to, at least.” 

He sniffed, a sheen of tears building in his eyes. “I know Eleine is very strong because when we got to the gate of the circle, all these people tried to attack us. And she made us leave, but I could still see her. She was in the middle of them. Alone,” he blurted, “but she was winning.” 

“Why do you believe I should take pride in this, Sven,” she thundered, “I dealt more death that day than anyone else.”

“Because you saved more lives than would have had a chance if you had not been there.” Sven was shaking, tears of anger, of frustration gathering in his eyes. “Maybe you are not as good as I thought you were,” he cried, “if you are so ashamed about saving my life and teaching me not to hate mages.” The boy turned on his heel, fleeing.

“Sven, _you do not walk away from me._ ” Eleine stomped after him. 

Sven hurried away. “No,” he shouted back, “I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Stop being so maker damned childish all of the time.” She screeched. Sven ignored her, starting to jog away. He was heading for the forest, _the fool_. “Sven, do not go into that forest! Sven, no, you come back here right now,” she ordered. “ _Sven._ ”

But it was too late, he was streaking through the dark pines, disappearing amongst the snow and woods. She broke into a run, ignoring the calls of her companions behind her.

 _Stupid boy, stupid, stupid_.

She broke through the seam that marked the beginning of the forest, whipping her head around, looking for signs of him. She saw his deep tracks in the snow, and hurried after them. “Sven,” she called, “come back. It’s not safe in here. Sven!” 

But he gave no answer. Her breath puffed out in panicked mists. And then she heard it, his yell. Of terror, of pain.

She shot through the snow, melting it with each step, her fire building and building. Bursting through to a clearing, she saw Sven huddled on the ground, horrified eyes on an enormous shadow that loomed above him.

Bear. 

She projected a barrier around Sven just in time, as the beast’s massive weight slammed down against it, a hail of claws and teeth. A fire whip coalesced in her hand, and she let it arc towards the rippling mass of death, corralling it back into the woods. It bellowed its fear as the flame snapped against its hide, and barrelled away into the trees. 

Sven turned wide eyes on her. She strode to him, gripping his elbow, hard, and yanking him to his feet. He took one look at her tight lips, and said nothing, but trundled along with her, head drooping. 

“Are you hurt?”

“No,” he grumbled. 

They marshalled past her companions, all bemused and wary, to a fire by the lake. She pushed Sven down on a sitting log, slumping on the one opposite him. With the flames between them, she glared her agitation. 

“You are not my mother,” he spat. 

“Good,” she seethed back, “because I would hate to have such a fool of a son.” 

Sven slumped, arms crossed, looking peevish and unapologetic. Eleine buried her face in her palm, trying to calm her breath and anger. She sent a dirty look to the boy. “You should have been a baker, for all your skill at defending yourself.”

Sven looked up at her, eyes wide. “How did you know I always wanted to be a baker?”

Eleine groaned, covering her face again. 

“Seriously, how?” He asked

“Just be _quiet_ , Sven.”

“Well, well,” Varric tittered into view, no doubt drawn to the drama, “that was the most undignified sound I have ever heard you make.” He turned his eyes on Sven, the teen muttering to himself and fidgeting. “I didn’t know you had a son, Terror.” 

“Terror?” She asked, voice thin. Varric grinned. 

“Saying the shoe doesn’t fit?” 

She rolled her eyes. “Apparently, I am a _liar_ today, so yes, that is exactly what I mean to infer.” Sven jittered across from her, mouth opening to no doubt spew forth more arguments. 

She glared him down into silence, to which Varric laughed. 

“And he’s not my son,” she quipped. “On that note.” She swung to her feet, less graceful and far more harried. “I am sure I can leave him to you, hm?”

Varric looked taken aback. She trudged back to her advisors through the snow. Dorian, Bull and Solas had already returned inside. “Make sure he has lodging and some warm food.”

“’Ey! Terror— don’t dump your son on me,” Varric called behind her. And did he sound shrill or was that just her hopes? Trying to get a kick out of her suffering, serves him right. 

“And put the boy to work,” she yelled back. As she relaxed into her usual stance by her advisors, hip cocked and arms crossed, she met Leliana’s probing gaze.

“That was eventful.”

“Knowing Sven,” Eleine remarked, “it could have been far worse.”

“What was this about a ‘Circle Horror’, exactly?” Leliana continued, unrelenting. Cullen looked concerned beside her, brow a mess of lines. Eleine felt a weight press against her chest. 

“There was a… blood mage, in Ostwick Circle for a time.” She looked to the mages filtering into Haven, being checked over by Templars and spies alike. Cullen gave a slight shudder from across from her. She kept her eyes averted, pretending she had noticed nothing. 

Fiona frowned, following her gaze. “And they were dealt with?”

Cullen tightened his hands on the hilt of his sword, drawing her gaze. His eyes were darker than she had ever seen them. Gone were those irises of warmth and honey. In their place was that particular sheen of a Templar. The hunter. 

_Raging fire, roars, the clatter of steel and bellows of mana depletion_. “Yes,” She confessed, “but not before the death and disappearance of eight Templars.” Josephine’s eyes filled with sorrow and Cullen looked irate. 

“How did we never hear of this situation within Ostwick Circle?” Fiona wondered. 

“Outside ignorance came as much of a surprise to me as it has to you,” Eleine addressed the older mage.

“And were you acquainted with this blood mage?” Leliana lilted. 

Eleine felt the stutterings of irritation enter her veins. Always hounding, always searching. Sniffing and prodding at her to see if she was a threat. After everything she had done for them.

“Not to any extent that you would need to be concerned about,” Eleine drawled, letting an air of indifference leak from her. “His name was Travon. A mage three years my senior. He was subdued by three Templars that unfortunately fell upon his defeat.” 

“He must have been very powerful,” Josephine murmured. 

“And I wonder to which point you will be satisfied, Leliana,” Eleine spat, arms dropping to her sides and stance widening, “to which extent of my loyalty it will take for your fear and suspicion of me to dissipate.”

“Perhaps never,” Leliana returned, unperturbed. 

“I think we’d all best pray it’s soon,” Eleine threatened, “because there is only one of me. And I have a limited patience for such undeserved scrutiny.” 

Tension whipped in the air. They were both too similar, Eleine knew. Both hoarders of shadows and lies. They could recognise it within the other.

And neither trusted. 

Not at all. 

Eleine strode away, unchallenged.

She realised in that very moment she held a power that could not be challenged. The green glow on her hand was a mark that could not be contested by her allies. 

Perhaps that was why Solas watched her so. 

Stalked her so. 

Checked her so. 

She wondered if she was grateful or not. 

 

Eleine let out a ragged breath. Now they only had to wait. Eleine pocketed the missive, pushing through her chipped wood door to the bustle of Haven. She eyed the swarming village. 

It barely had enough space to handle the influx of mages. 

She scoured the residents, searching for a visage easily overlooked. There. “You,” she called, stopping the man in his tracks, “come.” He did, a particular slinking grace to his walk that assured her she had not chosen wrong.

Before she could stop herself, she held out the note, grim. “To the Dales,” she intoned, “make sure it gets to her.” 

The man nodded, an excited gleam in his eyes. The moment he snuck off, she withdrew to her room, slumping against the door. 

Was she truly willing to do this? Should she stop him, burn that blasted letter to ash?

Would she risk herself this way, for the Inquisition? Her fingers were on her handle before she had had time to notice. How far could she really go for the Inquisition? She ripped herself away, staggering to her tub, the edges digging into her palms as she stabilised herself. 

Those words pounded in her head. 

_Harper._  
_I have need of you again.  
Eleine._


	5. Strategies For Seducing A Commander

_Someone’s being naughty again_. 

Eleine eyed the slip of paper, so thin, so flaky. _So maker damned infuriating._

She definitely regretted it. If she had that cursed amulet in her hand right now, she would rip the fabric of time just to scramble back and murder herself before she contacted Harper. 

What had she been thinking?

Knowing Harper, the mad woman would probably show up herself with the shipment, spouting all sorts of truths that would damn her.

Why had she done it?

There was a knock on her door, and she dragged herself up from her bed, walking hollow steps to answer it. 

A messenger stuck his head in. “You are needed in the war room.” 

She closed the door in his face and sat back down on her bed. 

Her fingers trembled over the slip of paper. She had two choices. Send a second message, call off the deal. Or… or go ahead, and risk everything. 

Risk being chained again, cloistered and watched. 

The paper burst to flame in her palm, curling and writhing as it lost its moisture. It flaked and filtered off into the air, no longer identifiable as anything other than dust. 

Just like that, just as she had always done. She could burn away her problems. 

The Inquisition did not really need the lyrium, as Cullen said, they had other suppliers.

And since when did she care about what was best for others? 

She stomped to her door, ripping it open. The anger pumping in her veins was something she was well used to. But she knew deep down it came from her confusion as to why she couldn’t just write that note back, dismissing Harper and keep herself safe. 

It would be so easy. 

So what was holding her back?

The cold of Haven whipped around her, chilling her nose and fingers. She became aware of how heavy her breathing as great mists plumed in the air before her. Though sense told her to take a moment, to regain her calm façade before joining the meeting, her heart told her to storm in and make _them_ pay for her tangled feelings. 

And so she began her journey to the chantry, that wretched place, to hear the demands and needs of the many. She was by its reaching oak doors when she heard his name called, and froze where she stood. 

“Oi, Sven, dinna think yeh’d be ‘ere,” a teen mocked, his hulking frame an indication of where this was going. “The wee ones’ training is o’er ‘er, aye.” Eleine watched as Sven took note of the boy’s posture, and she readied to slam that insolent bastard to the ground should he make one violent move against Sven. 

Sven just smiled. “Apparently my wild swings scare the kids too much.” 

The tawny haired brute laughed. “’ey, maybe I’ll teach yeh proper.” 

Sven swung his stick sword idly. “I think I’m unteachable. Appreciate the offer though.”

She started as the other boy placed a hand on Sven’s head, swirling it as she liked to do. “Naw, none of ‘at ‘ey. C’mon, gotta make ‘at ‘erald mother proud of yeh.” 

And off they trotted together, Sven with one more friend, one more ally, and that boy an unrealised attachment. 

Just like everyone Sven came into contact with, that boy was wrapped around his little finger. She threw open the doors, stalking up through the chantry, ignoring Vivienne’s address and the call of Mother Giselle. 

She entered the war room, her confliction only heightened, and her mind a snarled mess. 

She wanted to write that note, yet still, something within her stayed her hand.

“How long until your lyrium arrives?” Leliana asked, the moment she settled into her posture. 

“Two days,” she breathed. It was sealed now. Done. 

Cullen relaxed across from her. “That gives me the time to properly prepare the troops.”

“Yes,” Leliana agreed, “it is ideal.” The woman turned to Eleine, but Eleine refused to meet her gaze. She would be as uncooperative with the woman as physically possible. “You will need to be idle these next two days, Herald. We need you fully recovered for the assault on the breach.” 

“I’m aware,” Eleine responded through tight lips. Turning to Josephine in place of Leliana, whom she would normally ask, she inquired, “Did the Qunari Tamoren make it to Haven?”

Josephine nodded over her clipboard. “Yes, Herald. He presented himself as a very capable healer and scholar. He is helping Adan in the clinic.” 

“Background checked out?” She pressed.

“So far as I could investigate, yes. He is from the Free Marches and raised by an adoptive family.” 

Eleine nodded, relieved and sceptical in equal measure. Leliana, Cassandra and Josephine delved into issues regarding the cohesion of the mages and what Templars they had, with Cullen piping up every now and then with measures he had already begun putting into place. 

“There’s no chance our Herald could calm them, either,” Leliana remarked, to Eleine’s amusement.

“A dig at my eloquence, Spymaster?” 

“On the contrary,” Leliana put her hands behind her back, “it is clear to me you have a very skilled tongue.” Eleine huffed out a laugh, sending Cullen a look. The Commander looked away, and she withheld a sigh. “They take issue, I am sure, with your overwhelming abilities.” 

Eleine watched as Cullen’s mouth drew down and Cassandra shuffled her feet. “Fearful of those on their own side,” she scorned, voice hard, “The Templar order truly bred open minds and big hearts.”

Cullen cleared his throat. “To be… fair,” she rolled her eyes at the word, “you are perhaps more dangerous than they have ever known in their life.” Cassandra nodded beside him. 

“Yes,” she returned, “I am.” His eyes snapped to hers, molten gold and bronze. “But unlike the Templars, I have no hate for those who ally themselves with me.” 

Something exchanged between them, then. She felt it trill through her, and snake in her core. But he looked away, as he always did. 

Two days. She would use that time well. 

She would convince that flighty Commander to divulge himself in some entertainment for the both of them. She was sure her addresses had been either too forward or too strong for him. He seemed a skittish man, intent on keeping himself mainly separate from others. Therefore, she would entice him to come to her all on his own.

“If there is nothing further to discuss,” Cullen said, edging toward the door, “I have much to attend to.” 

“No,” Josephine returned, signing off on her clipboard, “I think that concludes the meeting.”

Eleine wasted no time in niceties or farewells, before speeding out the door, faster even than the harried Cullen. She had a Qunari to track down, and a monster to get through first to see him. Vivienne inclined her head as she breezed past, and Eleine waved a hand. Maker, she detested the woman. Everything she hated in a noble squatted in that woman’s body. 

She kept her eye out for Sven and that boy as she trudged through the snow to the clinic. She did not see them, but hoped that everything had stayed civil. Dorian gave her a jaunty wave as she swept into view, and she returned it with a smile. The encounter reminded her she owed him a conversation and perhaps a shadow of an apology for hitting is sick friend. She had not forgotten, just… ignored. 

Eleine eyed the healers cabin. The last time she had visited, she had gotten into a series of arguments with the healer that was not a healer. Still, her quarry resided within, and she had no intention of being cowed.

Eleine pushed open the door, sniffing as a wave of medicinal herbs assaulted her nose. 

“If it displeases your high-born nostrils so much, don’t come in,” Adan snapped from his desk. _Lovely_. 

“How did the last healer die, exactly, Adan?” she retorted. 

He stood, furious. “Oh, so I’m a murderer now, am I?”

“You certainly have the disposition of one,” she bit. 

“What do you want?” He strode to her, getting far too close to her face than she would usually allow. “Hurry up. I have more important things for my time.”

“To your everlasting shock, I am sure, I have not come here for you. Where is Tamoren?” She demanded. 

“The Qunari is out picking herbs,” Adan snarled, “Now get out.”

“Love you too, Adan,” she quipped, giving him a mocking smile as she slammed the door closed behind her. Solas rose a brow at her from his position outside his cabin.

She rolled her eyes. “Nasty man.” Solas gave a wry smile. 

She had no interest in scouring the woods for Tamoren, so she would wait by Cullen’s training grounds for him to appear. Maker, what an inconvenience. 

Eleine snickered to herself. 

She swept into his training ground, amused to find him trying to instruct a shaky Sven on how he was holding his sword wrong. Sven had said so himself, Cullen was fighting a losing battle. She watched for a while, taken with the kindness on Cullen’s face. He was a man… quite unlike any she had met before. She had thought she knew the hearts of men, but every second she spent around his company, she found herself questioning. 

She wondered what it would be like, to be on the receiving side of that kindness, of that care. Cullen looked up to see her, and a flash of guilt crossed his face to her amusement. 

He gave Sven a pat on the shoulder, and worried his way over to her. 

He opened his mouth, no doubt to explode with apologies for getting distracted, but she cut him off. “You are more than deserving of a few minutes’ rest, Commander.” 

He closed his mouth, a war still raging on his forehead. “This is an important time—“

“Commander,” she chastised, “there is no man capable of doing his job efficiently with no respite.” 

His face smoothed out into something much less tortured. “Thank you, Herald.”

A smile curved the corners of her lips. “Besides… I would be more than happy to help you relax sometime.”

Cullen laughed, most certainly _not_ the reaction she had been seeking. “Your idea of relaxing seems far too intensive than I could handle right now.” He looked over at the training mages, and she patched up her bristling pride as much as she could. He had just misunderstood. 

That same damned messenger appeared by Cullen’s side, intruding on her plot. “Commander,” he informed, pulling those warm eyes from her to him, “memos from Leliana and Josephine.” The messenger hurried off at her look, one which Cullen entirely missed, with his head now buried in work. 

Her head whipped over to the right at Sven’s cry. But the boy had just tripped on a branch hidden in the snow. She let out a breath past the pumping of her heart. A thought snaked through her mind. 

“Do you like children, Cullen?” She asked, a wan smile on her lips. 

He looked up at her, hands full with missives. “I do.”

“You’re certainly good with them,” she commented, eyeing Sven now training again. 

He followed her gaze and smiled. “He may be a boy, but he’s not a child.”

She snorted, “You haven’t heard him complain about his sore toe yet, have you?”

Cullen raised a brow, handing off his notes to a passing messenger. “No, I cannot say that I have.” 

“You’re missing out,” she teased, eyes tracing the evident lines of his muscles beneath the mantle. She saw him colour, his hand coming up to rub the back of his head. 

He cleared his throat. “I hope you won’t mind if— I only mean that…”

She was intrigued. She swayed closer, tilting her head to catch his eyes. “Yes, Cullen?” 

“Well—“ his eyes flitted away from her, “I wanted to ask if he was truly your child.”

Eleine fell back, cocking her hip and crossing her arms in disappointment. 

“I did not mean to—“

She shook her head, silencing him. “You have not injured me, Commander.” She looked to Sven in time to see him slammed to his ass by a boy half his age. She rolled her eyes. “No. I did not conceive nor give birth to Sven. He was brought to Ostwick as a young boy…” she strained to think back how many years. “Five, I think he would have been. Passing acquaintances is all we have ever been.” 

Cullen watched her for a time. “You must be an affectionate person,” he said, and Eleine reeled back in surprise, “if how you care for him is how you care for passing acquaintances.” 

“Not at all,” she returned, disgruntled. 

He smiled, his eyes amber eyes coruscating. “He’s very lucky to have you.”

“Well.” She ambled off, shooting looks at the still smiling Commander. She would not be staying for any more of _that_. Awful.

She picked her way to Sven, who had slipped off the training ground, sheltering himself partially from view of his superiors behind a pine. She popped around the side of the trunk, startling him. 

“Eleine?” he cried, righting himself, “maker don’t do that.”

She crouched down beside him, noting the unhappy sprawl of lines on his brow. “You hiding from training?”

Sven sniffed and shrugged. He dug his stick sword into the snow, eyes plastered on the distraction. “Not like it’s going to do anything.” 

She sighed. “Logically, it will.” 

Sven turned tortured eyes on her. “You know it won’t.”

She sat down beside him, eyes on the thick forest before them. “Why did you join the Templar order?”

Sven dug his stick in harder. “You know I didn’t.” 

Eleine took the stick from him. “Abandoned?”

He shrugged again, fiddling with his fingers now. “Don’t remember. Know I had a family once. Just didn’t one day.” His head hit the trunk behind him as he looked up, breath puffing in the air before him. “You?” he returned.

Her hands stilled over the wooden sword. “I wasn’t good enough for my family.”

Sven looked at her. “I don’t think I was, either.” They sat in silence for a while, listening to the grunts and groans of the recruits behind them. Their determination, their devotion an echo of something neither Eleine nor Sven understood. 

“Why do you never get upset when someone disparages your abilities?” she asked at last.

Sven shrugged. “Not like there’s anything to get upset about.”

“Most…” she struggled, “dislike being belittled like that.” 

He looked to her, and there was a heaviness in his eyes she didn’t like. “They’re not wrong about what they say. And it’s not like I have anything to prove, or anyone to prove it to. Even if I were good, who would care?” 

This was one of the scant few times in her life she felt wholly inadequate. She had no idea what she could offer the boy. What words should she say? She had even fewer people in her life than he did. If she were honest with herself… she had none left. 

Not one who cared for her, nor she in return cared for. 

But she could see an aching in him, an emptiness needing to be filled. 

“Do you really want to bake?” she asked.

Something happier sparked in his eyes. “I always have.” 

She nodded, sweeping to her feet and holding out a hand for him. He took it, bubbling excitement in his eyes. She pulled him along behind her, weaving through Haven to the bustling building by the eastern side. She turned to look at him, and smiled when his eyes lit up. She knocked on the door to have it ripped open, revealing a harried woman, splotches of red on each cheek. 

“Herald—“ the rotund woman spluttered, “what—“

“A recruit,” Eleine pulled Sven forward, hands on his shoulders, placing him beneath the woman’s steely gaze. 

“Hmmm,” Head Baker Brianda contemplated, keen eyes taking in Sven’s forearms and fingers. “Yes,” she whipped out a hand, grasping Sven and pulling him into the sweltering heat of the bakery, “he’ll do fine.” Eleine caught a look at Sven’s overjoyed face before the door was slammed in her disgruntled one. 

And there, from the corner of her eye, she saw a hulking frame and one gnarled horn.

Before he could vanish from her view – or worse, go back inside the clinic – she sped after him, calling out. 

“Tamoren.”

He stopped in his tracks, hand falling just short of the handle. He turned wide, surprised yellow eyes on her. “Eleine.”

She stopped before him, cocking a hip. “I see you settled in well.”

He gave her a smile. “So did Clemence. I don’t think I thanked you enough.”

She watched the sparkle of true gratitude in his eyes. She nodded. “I am glad it worked out.” 

“Will you come inside?” Tamoren gestured to the clinic. She sniffed and he laughed. “I have heard enough foul things fall from Adan’s lips to know you two do not get on. I can assure you he will be doing his rounds patching up the training soldiers now.” She sighed, and nodded, following him into that tainted place. She was prepared for the stench, this time, and struggled not to give any outward reaction for Tamoren to tease her for.

“Did you know Clemence before he was made Tranquil?” she asked, leaning against the closed door, as far away from the herbs as possible. 

Tamoren began unpacking and sorting. “Met him when we were kids. Lost him when he was taken to a circle.”

“Found him years later, Tranquil?” she sighed. 

He looked to her and shook his head, sadness inlaid in those eyes. “No. I found him before that when I was hired as a scholar in their circle.” He looked down at the scattered leaves and flowers. “He was made Tranquil when I… when I was there.”

She pushed off the door, eyeing the bookshelf on the left wall. “I take it he didn’t volunteer himself.” Tamoren shook his head, hands closing to fists. She withdrew a purple volume from the shelf. “I take it that is why there are so many books on Tranquility here?”

His head whipped up, looking possessive of the book in her hands. He held out a hand for it. “I know there is… no point.” He hid it under his arm, face tortured. “But I can’t just do nothing.”

Eleine offered no response, turning back to the bookshelf. He knew everything she could have said already. And she would not offer him falsities. She raised a brow at an expensive looking tome, all red silk and pearls. She pulled it out, waving it at him in question. 

Her hackles rose as he stilled, eyes wide. “Tamoren?” she threatened. 

He shook his head and shuffled his feet. “It’s a— uh. A diary I found.”

She flipped through a few pages. “Lea Beaumont?” she inquired, eyeing the cursives strokes. 

He shrugged, turning his back to her and continuing with his work. “Just some noble lady, I believe. Probably lost it at some point.”

She sucked on her teeth, eyeing the curve of his back and the hunch of his shoulders. Perhaps she _should_ bring him before Leliana’s notice. 

But Josephine had said his past checked out, and Eleine was sure he was noticeable enough appearance wise as to have made an impression on people that would account for any wrong doings. There had been no mention of any dark secrets, so she would sit on her suspicions for now. 

“Is that so,” she returned. 

“You can have it.” Tamoren busied himself with the herbs in his pouches. “I believe you should have it.”

Eleine raised a brow. “So lots of sex then?”

Tamoren barked out a laugh, his great chest undulating. “Not quite. But very interesting for you, I’m sure.” 

Eleine sighed. “You’re lucky you met me now.” She made her way to the door. “I would never have tolerated you before.”

“Tolerated me?”

“You are nothing but slippery, Tamoren.” She left him beneath her eyes for a while longer, watching his own gaze draw down. “I do not have to repeat my earlier threat, I am sure. But keep it in mind. I do not deal in forgiveness.” 

With that she left him to roast beneath her magic heat. A lingering warning, vestiges of her sentiment. He would not endanger these people.

She would not be responsible for their pain nor suffering.

Still, she eyed the diary resting in her palm. 

 

Waking the next morning brought with it instant images of the approaching smugglers. One last day, she perhaps had, of freedom. The thought left a bitter tang on her tongue that she was determined to replace with the taste of Cullen. 

She dressed with care, slipping into her cleanest, most form fitting outfit she had. Not practical for battle, but she was not in need of the practicality of that kind today. She combed her hair, braiding a few sections on top to keep the shorter hairs from her face, before pulling the whole lot up into a pony tail. 

Today would be a mixture of getting to know the senior mages in their army, and seducing the Commander, and Eleine found herself bursting with energy as she walked through Haven. She let her worries of the morrow sequester away, the firm knowledge that her fire could handle any problem thrown to her wedged in her heart. 

She came upon the grounds, eyeing the flurry of activity from the stairs. She missed her own training, the exertion of straining her muscles and flexing her magic. She rose a brow as she saw Vivienne tussle with a mage years her junior. 

After some contemplation Eleine did not know why she had been initially surprised. Building contacts, building relations. Building spies. 

Wretched Orlesian noble.

Eleine nursed her prickled bias, reminding herself of Josephine’s joyous face when she returned with Madame de Fer. The insufferable woman was worth that, at least. 

A flash of red drew her eyes back to the training recruits. Cullen strode through the ranks, eyes flicking from his missives to the troops. He barked out orders, and spoke in low tones to passing messengers. 

He was certainly a man who caught the eye. She wondered if she could catch his, too. 

She matched a drawling pace down the steps, entirely at her leisure for the first time since the rebellion. Her boots crunched in the snow, leaving behind trails of sludge and dirt.  
She waited by the edge of his training field, eyes tracking his every movement. He would turn – yes, there he goes – and see her standing there. 

The test would be if he would come to her. 

A slow, curling smirk of triumph graced her face. 

Recognition lit in those eyes of his, so distinguishable even from this distance, and he handed off a note to a messenger without looking at him, and began to pick his way to her. 

She hunted his every step towards her, memorising the lines of his body as she held his full attention. Maker, surely the man knew he was mesmerising. 

“Herald.” Mist puffed out of those lips, and she had to rip her eyes from that scar before she was caught. 

“Commander,” she returned, lilting. “Hard at work early, I see.”

He gave a wry smile, just the slightest uptilt of the right corner of his lips. “There is much to be done.” His eyes sobered. “Are you… prepared?”

She refused to turn from him to look at the hole in the sky behind her. She also refused to let him pull this conversation to such dark matters. “Well I shined my shoes and fluffed my coat?”

Laughter sprung up in his eyes. “All that you will need, I am sure.”

“I quite thought so myself,” she returned, “presentation is of high importance, you know.”

Cullen put his hands on his sword. “Unfortunately that is not an area of my expertise.”

“Oh?” she teased, “are you saying I _don’t_ look nice?”

“What?” he flustered, eyes jumping over her body, “I— no that’s not what I meant.” She laughed and he calmed, realising his mistake. “Very funny, Herald.”

A terrible, terrible idea snuck its way into her mind. “Do Templars take vows?” Eleine asked, a wicked tilt to her smile, “’I swear to the Maker to watch all the mages’— that sort of thing?”

Poor, unsuspecting Cullen looked somewhat unamused. “There’s a vigil first. You’re meant to be at peace during that time, but your life is about to change.” He swapped his weight to his other foot. “When it’s over, you give yourself to a life of service.” Was that bitterness hazing his voice? “That’s when you’re given a philter – your first draught of lyrium – and its power.” 

He looked to the training men, but his gaze was far, far away. No doubt looking into a past he despised almost as she did hers. She was beginning to forget her purpose. His conversation was somewhat captivating. Considering he was an ex-Templar, that was undoubtedly her libido talking. 

“As Templars,” he continued, “we are not to seek wealth or acknowledgement. Our lives belong to the Maker and the path we have chosen.” 

“A life of service and sacrifice,” she began, voice coy, “are Templars also expected to give up… physical temptations?”

His eyes grew wide. “Physical?” he stuttered, “why…” He cleared his throat, eyes skittering away from her. “Why would you…” Maker, the man was floundering. She withheld a laugh. 

He composed himself. “That’s not expected. Templars can marry—“ he broke off, thinking, “although there are rules around it and the order must grant permission.” His eyes could not stay on her for longer than a moment and she was caught between amused and frustrated. “Some may choose to give up… _more_ … to prove their devotion, but it’s – um… not required.”

She smothered her smile at the relief on his face to be finished. Poor, poor man. “Have you?” she inquired, a mixture of teasing and nonchalance colouring her tone. 

His eyes snapped to hers, a halla before a drawn arrow. “Me?” he flustered, stepping from foot to foot. “I... um… no. I’ve taken no such vows.” He seemed to deflate. “Maker’s breath— can we speak of something else?”  
_No_ , she thought, _this topic is perfect, thank you_. Impetuous as she was, she felt flickering’s of gratitude when a messenger interrupted them, cutting off her perusal of the topic. 

Gently, she reminded herself, gently. 

She bid Cullen goodbye, but she was far from finished. She certainly did not let him see her secret smile that exposed she had known all this already. 

And so she danced around him all day, swaying past, lilting out greetings and encouraging words. She was losing her lighter touch each rebuffed encounter, exasperated that the man was so determinedly obtuse. 

If she were less skilled than she was, Eleine was sure she would have made a spectacle out of herself by now. But for all her abilities, all her subtlety, all her resolve, the sky had purpled and deepened, and still she remained unbedded and unsatisfied. There was not even an offer, nor even the inkling that he may offer. 

She had reached the end of her machinations, the end of her imagination. There were no more ways of indicating her interest.

None, but a direct address of her intentions. 

She parted the flap of his tent with her hand, taking in the sight of him bent over his work. 

Eleine strode to him, her pride a cracking thing. She caught his gaze and held it. “Come to bed with me.”

There was a beat in which they looked at each other. Her stomach clenched, anticipation warring with trepidation. 

Cullen blinked. 

Then smiled.

“I will finish this then I promise you I will get my rest.” She held herself up from collapsing from disappointed hopes with the vestiges of her will. Before she could whip off all of her learned seductions and just blurt out _have sex with me, you difficult man_ , he walked toward her, that smile still on his face.

She froze as he placed a hand on her shoulder. 

Was this… a rejection?

Had he known this whole time—

“You are truly a kind woman, Eleine. Thank you for trying to look out for me.” 

Eleine’s libido was crushed to pieces. “Yes… Of course. You are welcome. Commander,” she stilted, turning on stiff legs and lurching out of his tent. She barely saw the world move around her as she walked on dead feet to her cabin. She ripped the door open, falling against it as it closed. How likely was it he was so dense he had misunderstood even _that_?

How likely was it… that he had rejected her?


	6. Herald Of Beasts

She tapped her blade against her leg, eyes keen on the arriving lyrium smugglers. She peeled over the nondescript faces, searching, searching. One whiff of Harper, and she would do whatever it took to keep that woman silent. 

But as they passed her in her position on a pine branch, ragged body after ragged body, there was no Harper to be seen. 

She heaved out a breath past the blooming relief in her chest. 

She stalked the group all the way back to Haven, eyes prickling with lack of sleep. The sun had not yet risen when she had slipped out of her cabin to ensure her continued safety. As she hunkered into the training grounds outside of Haven’s walls, she kept her eye out for witnesses. 

Espionage was not in her forte, but neither was it outside of her capabilities. She slipped back into Haven just as the sky began to lift off its blanket of blues and purples. 

She straightened up before she was caught squatting by the gates. Not exactly something she could easily explain away. She sucked on her teeth, taking heavy, slow steps towards Leliana’s tent that she knew would be occupied. 

She had to inform the woman the lyrium had arrived, but she would really rather not.

Leliana looked up from missives scattered over her table, and Eleine wondered if she could take a surreptitious peek at some of the juicy gossip. Leliana swung her body in front of the view, hand clasped behind her back. 

Eleine cocked a hip. The woman was infuriating. “They’re here,” she forced out, hoping she would not have to elaborate.

She didn’t. “Good,” Leliana smiled, eyes sharp, “my spies and I will greet them at the rear gates.”

Eleine was not sure she knew where those were exactly, nor was she sure she cared. “Joy,” she snarked, turning on swift feet. 

“Perhaps you can accompany me,” Leliana lilted, “and point out your contact to me?”

Eleine paused, but refused to turn back. She hummed, fingers toying with her braids. “I don’t think so.” Before Leliana could respond, she strode away, her mind’s eye focused solely on her bed. She had around two hours of rest to capture, before the march to the breach would begin. 

Enough time for the troops to warm up and dress, enough for the mages to assemble their tomes and potions. 

And enough for the smugglers to swell their stock of lyrium. 

Her fingers were ghosting on her door handle, when his voice rang out from behind her. 

“Herald,” Cullen called, pacing towards her. She froze, the events of last night swarming in the front of her mind. She straightened, rolling her hips as she turned around to face him. He pulled up before her, and she crossed her arms. 

“Commander,” she echoed, voice questioning. 

“How was your rest, Herald?”

She wondered if he was making a comment about her sleep deprived face. 

“How was yours?” she returned, eyeing the bags beneath his eyes. Cullen raised a hand to rub the back of his head, eyes sliding away from her.

“I uh— I did intend to rest when you told me, but there was much to do and I got… distracted.” He looked down, something like shame flickering in his eyes.

 _Distracted_? She fumed. He could have been distracted with _her_.

She swallowed past the shards of glass in her throat. “You will not be joining us up to the breach, so you may get your rest now.” Had her voice been as hollow to him as it had to her own ears?

Cullen sighed, eyes tilting up to the sky. “Forgive me, Herald, but I do not think I will get any rest until everyone returns… and it is over.” 

She followed his eyes to the roiling mass of the torn veil. “Fair,” she returned, and just caught the ghosting of a smile on his lips from the corner of her eye. She turned back to him. “Was there something you had need of me for?”

Cullen shook his head, rubbing at his eyes. “I merely wanted to see whether you were… ready. We cannot know how you will be affected.” 

Eleine turned that over in her head, sucking on her teeth. She supposed she could allow that small wiggle of happiness in her heart. It was not very often someone checked up on her well-being, and she was in no doubt that that had been what he had intended. 

“I am,” she insisted, giving him a smile in return for his. 

A man stumbled up to her, stinking of sweat and excrement. Eleine pinched her lips together as his muddied hand clasped her arm, and she felt Cullen take a threatening step forward. 

The man held out a note, his eyes reverent. “For the Herald.”

She snatched it from him, nodding her head. 

He gave a toothless smile and bumbled off. 

“What is it?” Cullen asked, eyes following the man’s staggers away.

“I don’t know.” She nodded to him, before slipping inside her cabin, blood boiling. 

She did. 

The door clicked shut behind her, and she braced herself against it. 

She slit her thumb between the fold, and flipped it open. 

_I don’t want none of your fucking fire near me, you saggy tit._

Eleine grinned. 

 

The mages and troops parted around her, marching in solemn streams up the rubble of the conclave. She was shaking, trembling from within. 

Whatever cursed magic was leeched to her own, it was rattling around within her, batting at the barriers of her skin, her organs, trying, straining, to get out. She fought down the watering of her eyes. 

She would throw herself into that pulsing hole in the sky before she let anyone see her weak. “Maker,” she breathed, eyes full of the sight of the breach, “though darkness closes—“ her mark throbbed and she buckled, her cry caught behind her teeth, and clutched at her wrist. She jerked herself upright, fingers splayed past the agony. “I am shielded by flame,” she heaved out. 

And then she was moving, legs swallowing up the charred stone beneath her. The vortex of green loomed closer and closer, sending pulses of strange magic through her body. She halted beneath it, eyes consumed with the jade eddies. She could barely breathe, her lungs felt empty, as if all the air had been sucked out and swallowed by the fracture before her. 

Beneath that devastation, she was no more than an ant.

Being crushed underfoot.

But not for much longer.

Cassandra and Solas pulled up next to her, and her eyes were wrenched to her left hand. It was pulsating, clawing outwards, only to slam back against her skin. It had been like this before to. The first time she had tried to close the breach. 

Only then she had been isolated, with the battle raging around her sheltering her from view. Here now, she was a spectacle. 

She was caged by eyes, and caged by her responsibility to them. 

She would close this breach for them, if only so they would not intrude on her freedom. 

Eleine looked to her right, to meet Cassandra’s eyes. The woman said nothing, and neither did Solas. 

Perhaps the swell of the fade encroaching upon their world was suffocating for them too. 

Eleine faced the breach once more, what she prayed would be the very last time. There was a pounding in her head, and it took a complete thrashing of her instincts to shove herself closer to it. Each step forward, more and more of the world around her was consumed. 

In a far-off place she heard Cassandra and Solas call to the mages, but their intonation was lost to her. 

For now, the world cracked around her, a mess of green jagged lines and streams. Eleine exerted against an invisible barrier, her left hand outstretched. She was gasping in air now, her shoulders shaking with strain. There was so much noise around her, banging in her ears. 

And then there was an onslaught of power in her, thudding through her mana channels. She felt it rush to her hand, a waterfall of magic far beyond her control. Before she was eaten up, devoured by the will of hundreds, she slapped her open palm up to the sky, letting it torrent from her in spiralling lines of raw, undiluted force. 

Her jaw ached as her teeth clenched together, and her eyes watched as, unbidden, the threads of magic began stitching up the colossal rift. 

It slammed shut, and the excess magic crashed from her, coalescing into an explosion of white. She had barely noticed her feet leave the ground, until her shoulders and head slapped into the jagged floor.

Her feet flew over her head to smash into the earth, and her cheek pressed into the ash crusted stone. She pushed herself up on shaking arms, feeling weaker now than she ever had before. She was dry, a barren well. 

Still, she breathed. Still, she lived. 

Her feet found purchase beneath her, and she heaved herself up into a crouch, skittering eyes on the calm of her glowing hand. 

Her head snapped to her right at a hand on her shoulder. Cassandra peered down at her, face a concoction of disbelief and joy. Eleine staggered to her feet. 

“ _You did it_ ,” Cassandra cried, and the conclave swelled with noise.

A cacophony of triumph and elation vaulted to the heavens. 

Eleine breathed past the blood in her throat. 

They would not dare touch her now. 

From this day onwards, she was free. 

 

Eleine watched as a tipsy Sven was corralled away from the flames by the muscled youth. Art, she had learned his name was. She could see the smile that curved his lips as he cared for a jubilant Sven. 

And Sven, as careless and content as ever, wrapped Art further and further around his finger. 

Solas loped up beside her, feet bare even in the snow. 

She eyed his toes. “Want some warm air?”

Solas scoffed. “If it were needed, I am capable myself.”

Eleine rolled her eyes. “Sure an apostate like you wouldn’t just singe them right off?”

Solas leaned against his staff, cocking his head to the side as he watched her. “I did not know you conversed overmuch with our Madame de Fer.”

Eleine paused, eyes finally sweeping to look at him. “What has that woman been saying to you?” she demanded, voice low and dangerous. 

Solas rose a brow, his regal cheeks growing more defined. “Tell me, Herald, if I were to inform you that I have been wronged in any matter, how would you handle it?” 

She felt the undercurrents of his test, and irritation flamed in her stomach. “I would put that useless, conniving woman in her place.”

“Ah,” he returned, “but she is not entirely without her uses, or you would not have allowed her into the Inquisition.” 

“And what has brought you to the opinion I had much say in the matter?”

“I will not be led to believe you are unaware of the power you hold over this Inquisition.”

“And I will not be toyed with,” she snapped, “if you wish to know what sort of a person I am, ask.”

He stood up straight, eyes reclaiming that predatory shine of theirs. “One moment you are slavering with bloodlust, the next you are spoiling a child—“

She opened her mouth to protest. Solas cut her off. “One instance you are slaughtering without asking questions, and the next you are showing mercy to a stranger with questionable origins.” 

His arm holding his staff thrust out to the dancing occupants of Haven below them. “Sometimes you are thick headed, driven by nothing but some feral instinct. And sometimes you spend hours discussing my expeditions in the fade, the things I have learned and the delicacies of blood magic. Tell me, Herald, what am I to make of all that?” 

“I don’t know,” she yelled back, “be glad that it is not your nature to live with!” Solas quietened, watching her as she looked away from him, eyes stinging with a mixture of anger and disquiet. “Each day, and each night,” he began, voice soft, “I wonder what sort of leader you will turn out to be.”

She sucked on her teeth, waiting for a few moments before the emotion released her throat. “The answer is that I am not one.”

“Altruism is not entirely in your nature,” he acquiesced, “but there is no denying that they will anoint you anyway.” 

“So this is what you think of them, then,” she said, eyes returning to Solas, “that they are fools.”

“No, Herald,” he parried, “it is what you think of them.” 

And then he was gone and the merriment swirling around Haven was lost on her. 

Solas was a dangerous elf to be making jokes to, she had since learned. So reserved, and yet the most combative out of them all. 

Maker, he liked to make a mess of her mind.

Uneasiness tingled all throughout her, and she braced herself on the hay beside her. 

Perched above it all, she watched as the troops and mages milled around, conversing and gesticulating with euphoric faces. 

Haven was drunk. 

Cassandra drew up beside her, and she heaved out a breath. She’d had enough visitors, for one night. The seekers eyes burned on the side of her face. “Solas confirms the heavens are scarred but calm.” Eleine could do with a few days of not hearing that name. She tilted her head up, looking past the dancing Inquisition to the vast vortex in the sky. “The breach is sealed.”

 _And where did that leave her now?_

“We have reports of lingering rifts and many questions remain— but this was a victory.” Eleine turned that thought over in her mind. Lingering rifts… so there was still work to be done. Still a place for her. 

For now.

“Word of your heroism has spread.” Cassandra smiled as Eleine whipped her head to the side, eyeing the seeker in disbelief. Now _that_ was never a word she had thought could apply to her. 

Heroism. 

Fools. 

She hadn’t even done it for them. 

“We don’t know what caused this,” she said by way of reply, pretending not to have heard that last bit, “we can’t rest easy.” 

Cassandra nodded, her eyes turning to the mess of Haven. “I agree. One success does not guarantee peace.” Eleine gave a wry smile. Didn’t she know that. “The immediate danger is gone— for some, so is the necessity of this alliance.” Eleine scoffed. She knew exactly who thought it was no longer necessary. “We must be wary. The Inquisition will need new focus.” 

They stood in silence for a few moments, drawing strength from one another. 

She could feel the seeker’s trust in her, and a trickle of fear quickened through her veins.

She had ignored what Solas said, discounted it for the—

There was a great clamouring from the mountains, and Eleine reeled back, horror lighting fires through her limbs. Cassandra flinched beside her, head whipping around to see the origin of the uproar.

Haven’s warning bells tolled, and her stomach plummeted. A flash of red raced over the snow, and Cullen’s eyes met hers from across the distance. “Forces approaching,” he yelled, “to arms!”

Haven fell into madness. 

“What the—“ Cassandra exclaimed, hand landing on her shoulder, “we must get to the gates.” Eleine barely heard the woman. 

She flung herself off the stone incline, sprinting to Sven’s side. She shoved scrambling villagers out of the way, and payed no heed of the calls for her until she had both her hands clasped around the boy’s arms. 

His pale lips seemed almost blue with fear. “Eleine—“

“You stay with Art,” she bellowed at him, “you stay with him and you get inside the Chantry.”

Sven began to protest and she shook him, desperation a foul tang in her mouth. “ _You do as I say_ ,” she screeched, spit flying from her mouth, “get to safety, now!”

Art snatched up Sven’s hand, nodding his head to her before dragging the fighting boy away. 

Adan jogged past her, spitting out, “Always something. You’re important, now go protect us.”

Oh, how she would like to see that man burn. 

She pushed through the surging crowds towards the gates, and was joined by a harried Blackwall and grim faced Sera. They shared no greetings, and Eleine was not sure she could speak anymore. 

Eleine caught sight of her advisors by the steps, and hurried to them. Cassandra had made it there first, and she rounded on Cullen. “Cullen?” she demanded.

“One watch guard reporting it’s a massive force,” he pointed a finger to the mountain, and she followed the line. “The bulk over the mountain.” 

Josephine worried beside him. “Under what banner?”

“None.” Eleine tracked the deep gouges of worry on Cullen’s brow. 

A smatter met her ear, and something in her flared with recognition. “None?” she heard Josephine repeat, perplexed. Eleine drew closer to the gates, head cocking to the side to catch more of the noise. 

The gates shuddered, light that could only belong to fire spilling underneath it. An Inquisition soldier ran to the gates, hand on his sword. 

From the periphery of her eyes she saw her companions draw their weapons, and Eleine unhitched her staff, prowling closer. 

“I can’t come in unless you open,” a voice called and something in her shuddered at the cadence. It was… wet. Sticky with something unnatural. And yet the it seemed to belong to a child, perhaps a teen. 

She ran to the gates, nodding her head to the soldier, and felt the sear of her fire in her throat. 

The training grounds opened up before her, and littered across them was a carnage like she hadn’t seen since the rebellion. Her staff thrust forward as a hulking soldier, not one of theirs, took shuddering steps towards her.

There was a great spurt of blood and he crumpled to the ground. 

She stood over the fallen body, eyes plastered on the form that revealed itself behind him. A distant part of her registered that Cullen had joined her, blade drawn and violence in every curve of his stature. 

“I’m Cole,” the boy puffed, and she eyed his raggedy form with open hostility. He was all sharp edges and bones, a physique she had come to attribute to things best left alone. 

It did not help either, that his vast hat covered his eyes from her inspection. “I came to warn you,” he continued, and she hunkered down close to him, “to help.” He lunged towards her and she tensed. Cullen took a threatening step forward beside her. 

“People are coming to hurt you,” the boy hurried on, and she was struck by a naiveté in his voice, “you… you probably already know.”

“What is this,” she demanded, off put, “what is going on?”

Coles voice dropped, almost a whisper now. “The Templars come to kill you.”

A million thoughts barrelled through her mind and her stomach became queasy with fear. 

Did they know? How had they discovered her?

Unable to respond, she clutched at her arms, eyes skittering to the mountains. 

Was this as far as she would make it?

“ _Templars?_ ” Eleine gave a small jump as Cullen’s voice cut across her. Cole backed up a few steps, wary of his angry approach. Cullen turned to her, eyes panicked. “Is this the orders response to our talks with the mages? Attacking blindly?” Her heart stuttered, a well of hope taking place where there had just before been despair. Perhaps… they weren’t coming for her. 

Distantly she heard herself mutter, “Sounds like the Templars to me.”

“The Red Templars went to the Elder One,” Cole answered, desperate. He whipped around to her and she felt her magic surge to the surface, almost, almost breaking free to incinerate the boy. “You know him,” he hurried on, “he knows you. You took his mages.” Cole swerved around, and held out a bony arm, pointing to a crag on the nearest peak. “There.”

Eleine’s eyes strained through the darkness surrounding Haven, but all she could see was a looming figure beside a smaller figure on the precipice. Around them swarmed moving creatures, ants, they appeared to her, but she knew they were Templars. 

“He’s very angry that you took his mages,” Cole finished, and she shared a look with Cullen. 

“Cullen,” she demanded, “give me a plan. Anything.” 

His voice was subdued as he responded, but his eyes were molten amber. “Haven is no fortress. If we are to withstand this monster, we must control the battle. Get out there and hit that force. Use everything you can.” He drew his sword, and Eleine did not need telling twice. 

Within moments she was joined by Sera, Blackwall and Cassandra, and she set a straining pace to the nearest trebuchet. 

Behind her, she could hear Cullen address the troops. “Mages,” he yelled, “you… you have sanction to engage them. That is Samson— he will not make it easy. Inquisition— With the Herald! For your lives, for all of us!” 

A trill darted through Eleine. She wondered what it would be like, to have mages swarming around her, their magic let loose at last, mingling with her own. Free, she wanted to scream, they were free. 

They fanned out around the trebuchet, nodding to the troops and mages that joined them. There were beats of absolute silence, and their forms became dipped in stone. Tension roiled off them into the air, and Eleine drank up the reek of fear swirling around.

At the sight of the mangled Templar bodies, red crystals sprouting out of their skin, her companions shared a horrified gasp. Not her. 

Eleine laughed. 

Screams, gurgles and the clamour of steel and magic rent the air, and yet her laughter split through it, clear, cruel. 

From the very bottom of her core, Eleine delighted in their monstrous appearances. This was what she had always known them to be. There was nothing to be shocked about, to recoil from. 

They Templars poured out from either side of the trebuchet, and she jogged back a few steps, letting her companions rush at them for now. Her staff whipped around, and she let her mana torrent from her. The flames flickered at her feet, small, thin tongues. She tended to them, hands down by her side. The battle had begun around her, but she would hold dominance over it soon enough. She felt flame tickle her outstretched palms, and a grin cut across her face. 

And then the blaze roared, blasting up above her head, two writhing beasts. She snapped her arms out before her, and the flame flashed across the snow, bidden. Eleine watched for a moment as parted like a stream around her companions to consume the roiling forms of the demented Templars, slinking inside their metal casing to eat at their flesh beneath. 

Oh, the screams. 

Soot fell alongside the snow, coating the ground with a film of black amidst the charred corpses. Silence ran thick through the troops again, as they braced for the next wave. 

No matter the instinct to shove herself to the forefront, she knew both Blackwall and Cassandra would hinder her every move. But she would not be denied her slaughter. Her vengeance. 

_Slavering with bloodlust_. Eleine shook her head. _Slaughtering without asking questions_. Her fingers slipped on her staff, slick with sweat. _Driven by nothing but some feral instinct_. 

The next wave of Templars was on them. But her mind was no longer there, no longer participating in the movements of her body. She watched herself kill and rend, overshadowing the monstrosity of the Templars. 

People swarmed around her, Inquisition mages letting off streams and shards of magic, and troops, producing volleys of arrows and flashing steel swords. Eleine had to temper her magic like never before, lest she incinerate friend alongside foe. It was a chaos she was not used to navigating. 

And then the trebuchet released its burden, and a great boom echoed alongside the deafening battle as it slammed into the mountain side. 

She heard smatters of a scream reach her ears. “… the other trebuchet… not firing.”

She left without further prompting, her companions trailing not far behind. 

The other trebuchet was unmanned, and Inquisition soldier bodies spoiled the blood-soaked ground. Instead, warped bodies infested the space, hunkering, malformed devils. 

Cassandra and Blackwall charged past her, battle cries thundering from their lips, and Eleine felt Sera’s lithe form lope up beside her, nocking an arrow. 

The crank of the trebuchet held her attention and as slippery as she could manage, she snuck past the roiling fight. She leapt up the stairs, ignoring her heavy breathing, and began to strain with the damned thing. The third time an arrow glanced off the trebuchet by her head, she wasted a few breathless moments to erect a simmering barrier around herself. 

What felt like hours past, till at last the trebuchet drew taut and low, and sprung up, hurling the fiery stone at the mountain. Eleine panted, arms shaking, as she watched the catastrophic impact. Even from this distance, the ground shuddered as the compacted snow grew loose, and a colossal avalanche began. 

Blackwall, Cassandra and Sera joined her on the trebuchet, battle dealt with, to see the approaching army being swallowed by the churning snow. The ant figures and pinpricks of light were swept out of sight, devoured en masse. 

Cheers rose from the ranks of the Inquisition, but Eleine nor her companions joined in. Something was coming. 

She could feel it stalking them. 

And then there was that shriek, that unholy screech she had prayed never to hear again. And a form was given to the sound.

Eleine threw herself from the trebuchet, her companions landing in the snow beside her, and the wood exploded, splinters and shards flying around the incline. The tattered form of a dragon swept past, and she felt her courage shrivel.

She lumbered to her feet, pulling an unstable Sera up with her. “Everyone to the gates,” she screamed. Chaos returned to the Inquisition as troops scrabbled alongside mages to reach the doors. She was not entirely sure why she thought walls would protect them from an aerial assault, but there was no use being exposed out here, either. 

After helping Herritt into his Smithy, Eleine reached Haven’s gates, gasping. She saw Cullen hunched by the gate, rushing soldiers and mages inside. Once they barrelled through to crouch by the steps, Cullen heaved the gates closed. 

Eleine gasped past the dryness in her mouth, needing air and saliva in equal measures. Cullen hurried past her, yelling at the troops. “We need everyone back to the Chantry! It’s the only building that might hold against that… that beast.” Cullen’s eyes met hers, and she saw the despair in them. “At this point… just make them work for it.”

Inside Haven’s walls, it was a battle for survival, with Eleine at the helm of the Inquisitions.

First Lysette, then Flissa and oh, Eleine was grinning with amusement as she wrestled a trapped Adan away from an explosion. 

“How do you like my highborn nostrils now?” she sniped, before rushing over to drag Minaeve to safety as well. Saving Threnn was less enjoyable, but she did get a few good swipes of her blade into Templars from it. 

Eleine had never been in such an extended battle before, and the exertion was quickly becoming too much for her. When they had to race back down the stairs to rescue a trapped Seggritt from her own burning cabin, Eleine was ready to collapse. Before they made their own break for the Chantry, Eleine swiped six healing potions, and four lyrium potions, taking one of each now. She was at the door, her companions fending off Templars outside, when her eyes landed on a flash of red. The pearled diary she had been so suspiciously gifted by Tamoren lay, partially charred, on her dresser. She snatched at it, and shoved in inside her pouch. 

Still, Haven was infected by the Red Templars, and progress to the Chantry was slow. At last they reached the proud building. 

Eleine yanked open the Chantry doors, ushering in the remaining villagers and troops. As she swept in herself, she heard a yell from her right. Heaving the doors closed, she pushed through the shivering crowd to see a scrimmage happening.

Art thrashed against the two Inquisition soldiers holding him back, and Eleine crashed through to his side. Alarm drummed in her body. 

Where was Sven?

Eleine’s hand fisted in the armour of one troop, and she ripped him off the boy. 

“Herald!” He cried but she lunged for Art, hands clenching in his shirt, and ripping him up to her face. Their noses pressed together as she spat, “ _Where is he?_ ”

Art sobbed. “Went back for 'e wee ones.” 

She felt her stomach lining give out and she hurled the boy to the ground. 

Within moments she was slamming back through the Chantry door, heedless of the calls behind her, and sprinting out towards the cabin she knew he’d be in. 

_Maker_ , she begged, _do not take him from me_.


	7. Weapon Or Woman

Eleine felt her legs and arms stretch and labour to maintain her precipitous speed. 

She could hear the calls behind her of her following companions, but she would not stop, would not turn back. Would not squat in safety while that boy, that stupid, _stupid_ boy got himself killed. 

The cabin was in sight, and she felt a rush of energy renew her. The ground was swallowed up beneath her legs, and within moments she was slamming into the side of the building, unable to slow herself fast enough. She pushed herself off as screams from inside the building rankled in her ears. Young voices, petrified. 

How had the troops left them behind?

She lunged for the door, eyes skittering around the twists of Haven, expecting any moment to see a Templar Horror or Marksman spring out at them. Sure enough, not long after Cassandra, Blackwall and Sera caught up to her, a flaming arrow buried itself into the roof of the building. 

Eleine saw the wood flare to life, and she panicked. Wrenching the door open, she almost was cleaved in two by a steel sword. 

That sword clattered to the ground as a pale face, stark with freckles, drew taut with shock. “Eleine?” 

“Maker—“ she yelled, “Sven get here now.” She reached for him, but he shook his head, dancing out of her reach and further into the cabin. 

Fear and frustration mounted in her as a cry from Blackwall alerted her to more enemies upon them. “Come here now,” she screamed, “please, Sven!”

But he shook his head again, reaching under a bed in the far corner to withdraw two young children. They scrambled to dive back under the bed, but Sven wrestled with them, and at last got them out and in his arms. They fought every second and she raced inside to rip them from his arms. They took one look at her thunderous face and stilled, tears overflowing from wide eyes. 

She stuck her head outside of the door, eyeing the confusion around them. Her companions were holding the beasts off them, but Eleine saw they were becoming quickly outnumbered. 

The roof above her cracked, and she remembered the fire that ate away at it. Horror spilled through her, and she caught Cassandra’s arm as the woman ran past her. Cassandra was pulled to a halt, angry eyes in Eleine’s. Eleine shoved the children into the seekers arms, and gave instructions she could barely her herself. “Get… children… Chantry, now!”

Cassandra hesitated, but nodded after a few moments, and tore off up to the only safe building. 

Eleine turned back for Sven.

Her hand outstretched, reaching, reaching, her fingers just ghosting over his. 

And the roof concaved, searing wood slamming down on top of him. He was buried. 

Eleine’s head slapped against the rubble, her lunge for him not fast enough. 

Though she felt the way her mouth opened, felt the way her throat bled raw with a scream, she could not hear it. 

Her ears were empty, a vacuum of silence. 

She fell from the precipice. 

There was no humanity left in her, just as it had been ripped from her all those years ago. 

In its place squatted a beast, a wild animal, clawing at the heap, desperate abandon pumping in her limbs.

Fire pressed at her skin, begging to be let out. But more fire would burn the boy alive faster than he was already. 

Her gloves singed off, her hands and fingers blistering and raw as she continued to tear at the wood. She was screaming his name, hoping, paying, he would call back.

But there was nothing.

Silence.

Had she truly lost him here?

Had she lost again?

She felt hands on her shoulders, trying to tear her away, words, cursed words she did not want to hear, spilling from their wretched mouths. 

But she was immoveable. She would save him, she would. 

_She would_. 

But her fingers were no longer finding purchase, the wet of her blood reducing any traction her brittle hands had ever had. Her world was fire, and for once, for the first time in her life, she cursed it. 

He was no more than four feet in front of her, bleeding, dying. And she could not reach him. 

Was this what she would boil down to, every time she left the confines of her walls and let someone in? Incapable of protecting them, despite all her power?

Just like Adahlen. Just like Anabelle. 

_Always too late_. 

Her magic thrashed. She felt her insides crust with ice, felt it seep through her pores, filling the air with mist and steam. She flogged her nature, leashed it deep within her. Fire would not save him, brute Eleine could not save him. 

The air turned sharp, biting in wicked gusts of cool air. The wood before her cracked, the glowing red of fire cooling, before wisping out, smoke escaping in curls from it.

Still, she let her magic pour from her, her mind conjuring those gales of snow and storm Haven had sequestered them from over the months. 

She held dominion over fire, and she would not let it take from her what she had long earned.

Her magic sought out the evil in the area, seeping into the devil’s bodies and freezing them solid. But she did not care. 

Her closed fists beat against the wall of iced wood, watching as it cracked and splintered beneath her. Her shoulders agonised every pound, but there was such a roaring in her head to reach him that it consumed any other concern. 

Her hand cut through the ice, fingers raw and damaged, but in clear air on the other side. She sliced it back through the hole, her arm guards catching on the shards of ice. Her fingers thrummed with heat, and the fire swirling in her belly joined each of her breaths. 

Bit, by jagged bit, the wall came down before her, the lattice work of fallen wood within it turning to ash from her tempered fire. 

And there he was. 

Eleine screamed at the sight his tattered flesh. She fell to her knees by his side, mauled hands unmindful of the pain as they pulled his body to her. The skin on his left cheek was completely burned away, the muscles and fat melting around his exposed gums and teeth. His hair had been scorched away, and cuts and blisters littered his exposed, pale body. He had been bled dry. A used leather bag, hanging limp over bones and deflated organs. 

He was not breathing, and his heart was not pumping. 

She had lost him. 

Eleine tore her pouches to her, blood soaked fingers slipping over her vials. She ripped off the cork of a healing potion, left hand bracing Sven’s bald and bloodied cranium. 

And so, she worked, forcing potion after potion down his throat till she had none left. Her eyes bled over the stitching up of his skin, and she was heedless of the tears that slipped over her cheeks.

Still, the boy did not breathe. 

Still, his heart did not pump. 

She was batted away, slamming against the ice wall beside her. Her head spun, and she whipped around to destroy her attacker. 

Adan was on his knees by the boy, hands pumping on his chest. She lunged at him, and he fought her off with damaged arms. 

“Do you want the boy to live or not?” he roared, and she fell back to the ground. Adan’s eyes seared into hers, and he whipped back to Sven, continuing whatever it was that he had been doing. 

She slumped against the iced rubble, knees pulling up to her chest, and her heart emptying. Adan worked over Sven’s lifeless body, and she could no longer hear the words spilling from his lips. 

The crescendos of death and slaughter filled her ears, and she could only listen as her home, the home of these people, was ripped from them. 

She knew a better woman would leave Sven, leave the futile pursuit of his life, and devote herself to insuring the safety of those left. 

But she was not that woman. 

She could not ever be that woman. 

“ _I’ve got him_!” Adan screeched, and Eleine’s world teetered to the left. She shot across the ground to them, scrambling to Sven’s side. 

That battered chest rose in a single, shallow breath. 

Adan fisted a hand in her shirt. “Go,” he screamed, “I have him, now _go_.” 

Go?

No. She had to make sure Sven made it to the Chantry, she had to make sure—

“There’s none of us going to survive this if those things reach the Chantry!” Adan yelled, “They need you, now go!” 

Eleine staggered to her feet, eyes lingering on Sven. She backed away, fear a terrible thing in her stomach. 

“’erald!” Eleine tipped her head back to find Sera backed into a corner, three Red Templars breathing down at her and Blackwall unable to reach her. 

Adan gave her a sharp nod, and she pitched herself towards the archer. 

Her mana enclosed her hand, and she fed it what fire she had left. Thrusting the appendage out before her, she watched the ball of flame grow and contort, before rushing towards the Red Templar Horrors, now in the form of her outstretched palm. 

The fire hand clapped shut around them, sealing them in a tomb of flames no beast could withstand for long. 

Eleine swept in beside Sera, hand clamping around the archer’s arm, and sprinted away from the screeching monsters. Cassandra raced back down the hill to them, helping Blackwall dispatch the two Marksman closest to them. Eleine was dry of mana, but her staffs blade was her second favourite weapon. Eleine let Sera slump against her back, the elf emptied of arrows. Any Horror that charged them, Eleine would fend off with her blade, dealing far less damage than she was used to, but adequate till they could be rescued by either Cassandra or Blackwall. 

Her eyes caught sight of Adan slipping past them, a boneless Sven in his arms. 

Her mind steeled, and she thought of nothing else but the destruction of the Red Templars around them.

As the ranks of the Red Templars began thinning, Eleine called for them to flee and return to the Chantry. They each struggled up the paths of Haven, taking rotating shifts of fending off enemies, till they saw the Chantry only a few metres from them.

“ _Inside_ ,” she could hear herself screaming, and they lunged for the doors. 

Eleine stumbled into the Chantry last, slamming the door shut behind her. Screeches and booms continued to prey upon them, the ruckus of the enemy trashing their home. They would soon be pursued. Eleine found herself wishing the Chantry was more of a fortified establishment. 

Running the back of her gloved hand across her mouth, Eleine panted through the pain in her chest. Her legs shook as she forced them to keep her upright. She would not sink to the ground, she would not lose her strength here, now. 

She wondered how much of the stench of death and fear came from her. 

The keens and bays of the injured and the guilty survivors had her shuddering against the oak. Her companions collapsed, around her. Sera nursed a cramping arm and several cuts, while Blackwall gauzed his own leg. Cassandra pulled an arrow from her thigh and was attended to quickly by Tamoren. Her eyes skittered over the masses, and she almost cried when she found Sven surrounded by Adan and Solas. 

“Herald.” Eleine pushed her heavy body off the doors to take aching steps towards the approaching Commander. Weariness threatened to make a ruin of his face. “Our position is not good,” he strained, “that dragon stole back any time you might have earned us.” 

Cole’s voice, slippery and cold, came from her right. “I’ve seen an archdemon. I was in the fade but it looked like that.” He helped a slumping Roderick sit up straighter. 

Cullen’s amber eyes flashed with a steel Eleine had seen only once before – at the mention of the Circle Horror. “I don’t care what it looks like.” She felt her fingers twitch towards her staff at the finger he pointed at Cole. In this moment, he was a Templar, and pointed fingers always heralded violence for them. “It’s cut a path for that army.” He placed his eyes on her now. “They’ll kill everyone in Haven.”

Irritation flushed through her at hearing her own thoughts spoken aloud. She didn’t want to hear the truth. She looked past him to the collection of injured. And there, with Solas crouched above him, was the tattered canvas of Sven. Her eyes stung. Art rocked back and forth by Sven’s side, hands beating at his head. 

“The Elder One doesn’t care about the village,” Cole said, his voice pitched so he almost sounded amused, “he only wants the Herald.” 

_How far could I go for this Inquisition_?

She felt unease thud through her, thick as honey and cloying in her head. Her eyes, unbidden, drew to Sven. Her gaze widened, and she saw full force the devastation clinging to the room. These people, these moaning, weeping people, were weak.

But Eleine had never been weak. 

She had clung to life for no other reason than to make her antagonists pay. Was that reason enough to keep going? 

Could she really sit back and watch hundreds of people die, without even the certainty of her own survival?

She’d never been good at hiding in the shadows while others took action. 

Eleine rubbed at her arms, turning her eyes back to Cole to find the boy watching her, head cocked. “If it will save these people…” her voice broke, “he can have me.” What did she truly have to live for, anyway? Her rage? Her pain? 

What more was she than a broken woman?

A weapon?

“It won’t,” Cole rebuffed, and the air was ripped from her lungs. Whoever this malformed boy was, he had no tact. “He wants to kill you,” Cole continued, “no one else matters – but he’ll crush them, kill them anyway. I don’t like him.” 

Such a strange mix of lethality and naiveté in that boy. She was without words. 

Cullen was flabbergasted. “You don’t like—“ he wrestled for control. Sighing, he turned to her. With his eyes heavy, he entreated to her, and she knew she would not like what he had to say. “Herald. There are no tactics to make this survivable.” She made to open her mouth, and he cut her off. “The only thing that slowed them was the avalanche. We could turn the remaining trebuchets – cause one last slide.” 

And there it was. A million arguments sprang into her mind, all centred around a deep-seated revulsion over such resignation. It didn’t matter if he was right. It only mattered that she refused to roll over and die. “We’re overrun,” she snapped, “to hit the enemy we’d bury Haven.”

“We’re dying,” he cut back, “but we can decide how.” His voice softened, and she had to look away from the gentleness in his eyes. “Many don’t get that choice.” 

She struggled. Her sense and her instinct warred against one another, and she had to force her eyes to stay down on the ground, lest Cullen see the sheen of emotion in them. She wished she had words to argue with him, wished she had another idea. 

But she felt the emptiness of her mana, felt the shaking in her limbs. She was not strong enough to continue fighting, and have it make a difference. 

“Chancellor Roderick can help.” Eleine’s head snapped over the almost inert Roderick. She pressed her lips together as hope flushed through her limbs, disgusted with herself. “He wants to say it before he dies.”

Eleine stalked to the man and hunkered down by his side, head cocked to hear his wheezed words. “There’s a path,” she caught him breathe, “you wouldn’t know it unless you’ve made the summer pilgrimage – as I have. The people can escape,” he assured, heaving himself up onto his feet. “She must have shown me – Andraste must have shown me so I could… te- tell you.” Eleine tracked the slump of his body, the way he hobbled with his hand clutching his wound. The man would not last too much longer.

Eleine lumbered to her feet, and turned on her Commander. “What about it, Cullen? Will it work?”

The man inclined his head, hesitance marring his mellow cadence. “Possibly… if he shows us the path.” Her eyes flicked back to the dying Roderick. She knew what he was worried about. “But what of your escape?” 

Eleine felt heavy, thick and full. Thoughts of wishing to return to simpler times flashed through her mind, but they were all swallowed with her understanding that she had been living on stolen time, anyway. Time she had wrested from her enemies. Eleine tried to dissect the emotion in Cullen’s eyes, wondering how he felt about what they both knew. 

She turned from him. 

“Perhaps… you will surprise it,” he faltered, “find a way.” She heard his retreat, and she sought out Solas and Sven. Solas looked up as she drew up beside him, eyes stormy and unreadable. She leaned down to him, face far too close to his. 

“He survives,” she threatened, voice harsh. 

Solas’ eyes flickered, but he only nodded by way of answer. She looked to the agonised Art. 

“Don’t fail him again,” she bit, and left before she could see his crushed face. 

She held on to the anger, let it wrap around her. This, she could process. 

Eleine paused before the doors, heart thumping wildly. She felt bile coat her tongue, and she rolled her shoulders. Blackwall stood up beside her, as if to accompany her, and she shook her head, eyes ordering the man to back down. He did, but with no small amount of hesitance. A few troops ran up beside her and slipped out the door first. 

“They’ll load the trebuchets,” Cullen worried behind her, “keep the Elder One’s attention until we’re above the tree line.” She did not turn back to him. She could not bear to see whatever expression he had. “If we are to have a chance,” he blurted, “if _you_ are to have a chance… let that thing hear you.” 

Eleine felt the corners of her mouth twitch into a shadow of a smile. He was a kind man, Cullen. The smile slipped from her face. 

She didn’t deserve that kindness. 

Eleine fingered the three remaining lyrium vials in her pouch. Sera clasped her arm, worry drawing her face. 

“I’ll come put arrows in their ugly faces, yeah?”

Gently, Eleine pried the girl’s fingers from her arm. She shook her head. “You will be more of a hindrance than help.” She turned her eyes back to the oak doors. “I don’t want to have to distinguish between friend and foe,” She clasped the three vials, and pulled them out of the pouch. “I need to let go.” And she tipped each vial back, downing the contents. A startled Cassandra lunged at her, trying to stop her. 

“Herald,” she cried, “if you take that much—“

Eleine cut her off. “I know.” 

And she was out, the chill of Haven stinging on her cheeks alongside the reek of blood and innards. 

Her magic flared, and raged into an open flame. She felt her mana channels tear up inside her, overrun by unnatural energy. She was flooding a well that should be dry with an eroding poison. The pain that seared through her was unimaginable, and Eleine lurched to the side, almost crumpling beneath it. 

But she had caught sight of the first Templar Horror, and she whipped herself back upright. Where seconds ago there had been one, now swarmed dozens. 

She tipped her mind back to that time of terror and hate, to when her heart screamed murder and her body bled with the deed. 

She sprinted to the middle of them, holding onto her consciousness by a thin tether. They lunged at her, and she released whatever control she had had on the beast in her magic. 

Her fire ripped out of her, flailing and writhing in abandon. There was no discipline, no guidance. It spun around her, a vortex of heat and hunger, and she sunk into the screams of the Templars. She was one step ahead of death and slipping. 

She stumbled into the trebuchet within Haven without conscious thought. Duty punctuated her agony, and she lurched to the crank, catching herself on the knobs before she could sink to the ground. That part of her honed since childhood, the instinct of being preyed upon, flared, and she wrestled for control of her flaming magic. 

She pressed the flames inwards, then out again in a searing barrier. 

A part of her brain recognised the sensations of her barrier rippling under attack, but she was being swallowed by the noise in her head, the screaming of her abused body. 

Her hands slipped and suffered over the crank, and she only then remembered the damage they had taken in her attempt to reach Sven. 

Sven. 

She pushed and pulled with all the strength left in her trembling, burnt limbs. 

A part of her whispered that in the end she _had_ been done in by the Templar order. At least that pleasure had been denied to her father. 

If the trebuchet hadn’t been loaded, she would not have noticed. Her vision was a tunnel, eclipsed by the overdose of lyrium and her seeping wounds. 

She felt the trebuchet draw taut, and she knew she was almost there. Just one more tug and—

Fear quickened through her at the throaty screech she knew belonged to the dragon. 

There was a burst of light, a great pluming force colliding with the ground at her feet, and Eleine was thrown up, only to slam back down into the ground a few metres away. 

Her head spun and thickened, moving through a quagmire of pain and confusion. Dimly, she felt herself lick her lips and pull herself up into a crouch. 

Eleine shuddered. 

That looming shadow was no longer a shadow, but a sharply lit monstrosity encased in flames. If she was more cognisant, Eleine would have been less jealous of how well he made his entrance. Her skittering eyes saw little of the tattered skin of his body, the shards of red that punctured his face and arms. 

Eleine staggered to her feet, open mouthed panting. The ground shook at an impact behind her, and she almost went toppling over forward. She refused to look behind her at the archdemon she knew would be there. She could hear it chuff and screech, but knew that if the Elder One bothered to come here in person, there was more he needed of her than just her instant death. 

Sure enough, the Elder One commanded the dragon to be silent, and she spat out some blood tanging in her mouth. Blearily she wondered how that had gotten there. 

She could hear the Elder One speaking to her, and she forced her brain to stay focused, but she was not successful. She caught words like “pretender” and “forces beyond your ken”. 

Rolling her shoulders, she spat back, “Whatever you are, I’m not afraid.” She still had plenty of mana wreaking havoc in her channels.

Again her ears heard only splatters of his words. “mortals” and “mine” rolled over and over in her head. Then he said something that stabbed through the fog in her brain, something she knew she could never forget. “Exalt, the Elder One, the will that is Corypheus.” 

“You’ll get nothing out of me,” she mumbled, wondering if he’d heard it. 

“You will resist,” he replied, “you will always resist. It matters not.” She wanted to argue that it certainly did. “I am here for the anchor,” he said, as if to himself, “the process of removing it begins now.” 

Her left hand tingled, then roared in discomfort. She did not even have the energy to cry out. She clutched her wrist uselessly, forcing her mind to stay above the water of consciousness. 

Corypheus was still talking, and she was half sure she only caught the end of what he was blathering about. “I do not know how you survived,” filtered into her brain, “but what marks you as ‘touched’, what you flail at rifts, I crafted to assault the very heavens.” 

She crumpled, slamming to her knees as pain rippled through her body. Her teeth clacked shut over her scream. She felt her magic flail out hopelessly, trying to protect her without knowing how. 

“And you used the anchor to undo my work,” the Elder One snapped, “the gall.” 

From here she slipped in and out of consciousness, at one point aware she was being held up by her left arm, dangling like a child’s toy. The only reason she forced herself to remain tethered to this world, and not slink into the fade, was that she had the lurking irritation of not having finished a job. 

Her back and head slapped into the trebuchet, and she slumped against the wood, straining to hear his next words. “The anchor is permanent. You have spoilt it with your stumbling’s.”

Oh, now _that_ sounded like her. Her thumb traced a grain in the wood beneath her, and her purpose began thundering in her head again. A single image, a single thought. 

At their signal, she had to release the trebuchet. She laboured to her feet, hands sticky and wet with blood, clutching a discarded sword beside her. 

“So be it.” Corypheus stalked towards her. “I will begin again. Find another way to give this world the nation – and god – it requires.” Her head slumped to the side, and she watched the mountains of Haven with aching eyes. And there, so fast, so small, she almost missed it. The signal. 

She looked back at Corypheus, scooting along the trebuchet till her bum bumped the lever she needed. “And you,” he proclaimed, “I will not suffer even an unknowing rival. You _must_ die.”

Yes. She must. But by her own hand, and not his. 

“You expect me to fight,” she lilted, triumph dripping for her voice, “but that’s not why I kept you talking.” To be fair she had not had any intention to keep him talking, it had just turned out that way. “Enjoy your victory,” she spat, “here’s your prize.”

She whipped around, and slammed her foot down on the lever, feeling the trebuchet swing and release, pelting its burden at the mountain. She did not wait for what she knew was coming. There was nowhere to run, but she ran anyway. 

The ground thudded behind her, and she knew the dragon had made off with Corypheus. 

_Well_ , she thought, _I tried_. 

The avalanche rent the ruins of Haven, and she had that peculiar sensation of being unintentionally air born. Weightless, she was raised off the ground. 

But she did not fly.


	8. Crawl, Insect, Crawl

Climbing out of the ravines of unconsciousness was every bit as painful as her initial fall into them. Eleine lay, paralysed, for several aching moments. 

Each rattling breath she took sent blooming pain skittering all over her chest, and she had to close her eyes to centre herself. 

She could not believe she had woken up. 

Eleine blinked past the tears of relief, not letting herself waste the energy on that much emotion. No, better to withdraw for a while, and let her body cope. 

She had no idea how much time past as she floated in and out of the fade, her mind scuttling around the room, picking up more and more details every haul back to consciousness. She marvelled at how long it took for her to realise she was cold, and to realise her mana channels ran almost barren. 

She had no doubt her overdose of lyrium was causing this emptiness in her head. The slap of her skull against the ice beneath her as she had fallen could not have helped either. 

Eleine barely felt herself moving, rising off her back to scrabble on hands and knees across the sleek ice. 

She was nothing more than instinct, a surviving beast of burden clawing for another minute of life. 

Her hollow chuckle bounced off the caverns walls back to her. That was all she had ever been. Even in the face of insurmountable odds, an avalanche and a Tevinter megalomaniac with a pet dragon, Eleine crawled her way to survival. Her shaky breath plumed in steam before her. She wondered what it was that had given birth to such a veritable core of steel within her. 

Had it been watching her best friend die? Or perhaps looking at her father’s face as he laughed at the death of his son and sent her away to rot in prison? 

Or maybe it had been the twenty years that followed. 

Eleine froze, eyes wide on the flash of tattered rags she had seen. And sure enough, there was the shriek. A despair demon floated a few metres before her, and she scooted close to the cavern wall, out of its sight. The longer she spent ruminating on such dark matters the sooner it would sense her, and she would die. 

Eleine forced her eyes to steady and search for a glimpse of something useful. Anything. A discarded dagger. A crystal shard. She had no idea where her own staff was, but had a suspicion she had lost it rather soon after coming out of the Chantry. Perhaps the influx of magic had destroyed it. 

Either way, she slouched against the floor. Her cheek pressed into the frozen stone. She was using what mana she had left to regulate her temperature. She withheld a laugh. She had only just noticed that she had been doing that. 

Her brain and body were a mess. Whatever the lyrium overdose had done to her, it would have lasting effects. 

She wrenched herself upright, pulling her brain out of the dream she had accidentally fallen into. Something about spiders and shadowed stone corners. What had Cullen said? _There are no tactics to make this survivable._ Eleine’s hand fought for purchase on the wall beside her, and she hauled her shaking body up. She watched her legs wobble beneath her and begin to give out. 

Pushing off the wall, she flung herself into the opening. The despair demon’s head snapped to her, and she saw the malformed face open up into a shrieking maw. She shuddered. She had miscalculated. 

Black robes swept up beside her. 

She faced two despair demons – and if the flickering green to her left was any indication, a wraith or two as well. 

She fell to her knees as a shard of ice careened for her head. As she slapped into the frosted ground for another time in the last twenty-four hours, Eleine knew she wasn’t getting up again. Her mark throbbed and pounded, and she did not have the strength to care. 

She heaved herself onto her knees to see more ice about to impale her. She flopped to her right, escaping by a second. 

Her mark ripped open and she screamed. The magic in her palm was demanding something, something she did not know. What had Corypheus done to her? Without the knowledge of how to control it, how to channel its desire, she let go. The cavern flooded with jade and she experienced the uncanny sensation of an implosion. The demons wailed and she clasped her hands over her ears as a great scraping noise wiggled its way into her brain. 

Her hands scrambled to pat herself down, checking she was still in one piece. She gave a low sob, confusion and fear mingling with exhaustion. Her mark calmed, and the light filtered back to normal. The noise dissipated like smoke.

And she curled up on the cold floor, alone. She spat out some blood gathering in the front of her mouth, watching as it stained the crystalline white-blue of the floor. Her fingers came up to explore her mouth, and she found she had bitten her tongue and bottom lip. Thankfully not all the way through. 

Now those were scars she didn’t need. 

Again, Eleine laboured to her hands and knees, and began to crawl. Crawl, crawl, crawl. An insect underfoot. A dying critter.

The air whipped her, and she fell to her side under its force. The mountains opened up before her, insomuch as could be revealed to a human’s eyes in a blizzard. She had made it out of the cavern. She laughed, long and hard. And what did that matter now? How was she to survive a trek up the mountain, to Maker knew where, in a blizzard? Eleine laughed harder, tears freezing on her cheeks as she realised that if she had had the strength, she could have run away now. She was alone. She was free. 

She was tethered to life by thread. 

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Her magic wrapped around her, a warm blanket, gentler than she had ever felt it. She did not know where the Inquisition had run away for shelter. She was by no means a tracker. She had no hope of surviving on her own with her injuries and exhaustion. She gave herself a few hours before her mana dried up and she shrivelled beneath the cold. 

Eleine pitched herself off the wooden platform she was on, and went tumbling down the snow slope. She rolled and rolled, a rag doll, empty of strength, but still whole. There was a pop and her head snapped to her right. 

She would recognise that sound anywhere. 

She did cry now. Full, openly. It was hope, it was comfort. It was disbelief. 

A discarded wagon burned beside her. Eleine felt her damaged core shudder. The Inquisition had left her markers to find them. They had thought of her. Perhaps cared for her. 

She lifted herself to her feet, blood boiling. She huddled close to the fire, stealing its warmth and letting her mana rest for now. The fire flickered and wisped out, and she wrapped herself back up in magic. She heaved forward a few steps before her legs gave out, and she went flying forward, toppling down the snow slope again. She pushed to her feet. Her hands came up to protect her eyes and she felt her face sting with the wind. She trudged forward, praying for another marker to be soon. 

Again and again she fell, and again and again she reached the end of her hope, to be slapped back into a fervour by the light of another fire, or the vestiges of a camp site. Her magic spluttered, and gave out. The full force of the cold slammed into her, almost a wall of power. She felt the remnants of tears around her eyes crust to ice. Her blood chilled, and whatever movement she had ever had was almost lost. 

It felt like it took years for her to take a single step, and that was at the times she managed to stay upright. Her world dripped away to white and pain. And then there was nothing left in her. No strength, no iron will. Just an empty head and dying body. 

Her cheek sunk into the snow and her eyes closed.

_There— it’s her!_

Strange, her thoughts told her. Strange that she would think of his voice when she was dying. She thought her last moments would be haunted. Haunted by the face of her father, Hagan, still alive and triumphant. Haunted by the ones she had lost. Haunted by the deeds she had done.

Perhaps her heart had sought out that kindness of his. The warmth he so generously gave out to those around him. Her hungry soul was drawn to it, begging to be allowed some of that innocence. Some of that care. 

Eleine teetered on the precipice. She fell forward into the darkness, only to have a green hand snatch her back. She was yanked into the fade. 

 

Eleine rubbed her thumb, index and middle finger together, toying with the blood that covered them. Not her blood. His blood. She looked down at the message she had written in the ash covered stone. 

_Treacherous._

Her boots splashed in the puddle of blood beneath her, and she craned her head down to see her reflection in the murky substance. The grin slashed across her face stained her soul.

 _Slavering Beast_.

Eleine reclined against a bookshelf in the Ostwick Circle’s library, eyes stalking the twisted forms of the twins. Not long now. Soon. Soon. Her heart thudded with violent anticipation. 

_Killer._

Someone was sobbing. Eleine shook her head, commanding them to stop. But the words did not come out, and they fell on deaf ears. It was a child. They were crying, and crying, and crying. Eleine shouted through closed lips. _Be quiet_. But they did not stop wailing. 

They were in pain. 

_Eleine can not take away pain,_ she told them. _She can only deal it_. Still, they suffered. 

She crawled through the blackness. Closer and closer she drew to the sound. _It doesn’t matter what I want_ , she told them. _It doesn’t matter if I wish to help._ She found them, and she tumbled to their side.

Eleine cradled the bald head in her hands. _I don’t know how,_ she whispered. 

_I’m sorry, Sven,_ she agonised. _I don’t know how._

Eleine wrenched herself from the fade, the sobs and cries hunting after her. Her world spun, and she shoved a looming body away from her. She was sure she was on the ground, because there was no denying that was dirt in her mouth. Her body screamed its disapproval, begged her to lay back down, to stop moving. Every nerve was on fire, but she had never minded a good burn. 

Her mind flitted in and out of the fade. The hurt drew her, and she followed its call. 

She slumped beside a still body, hands pulling that bald head to her own throbbing one. She could not move her lips, though she tried. 

_Shh, Sven_ , she crooned, _it’s going to be okay_. 

 

Eleine woke to the noise in her head. She had a moment of panic as she realised she could barely feel her body. A hand swiped across her forehead. 

“Shh, child.” Eleine recoiled at the voice. Mother Giselle, perhaps the last person on the planet she wanted to be around while weak. “It is the tonics keeping your body numb.” Eleine took several moments to grow accustomed to the sensations assaulting her. Distant pain, the stench of blood and muck and the clamouring from outside the private tent she was in. 

Mother Giselle eyed her, and she uncurled her hand from Sven’s. She craned her head to look at the unconscious boy. Her mouth drew down. He looked… withered. She looked back to the woman. “Will he survive?”

She looked sombre. “It is up to the boy.” Eleine lay in a small cot beside Sven, not nearly big enough for the two of them. She had little to no memory of how she got here.

She could hear her advisors outside beginning to yell at one another. So the noise had not been in her head. She listened to the anger and fear in their voices for a while, before heaving herself up on her elbow. It took far longer than she had expected. 

“Shh,” Mother Giselle repeated, and Eleine was extremely uncomfortable with the tenderness in her voice. “You need rest.”

She needed silence for that. “They’ve been at it for hours,” she growled, tongue dabbing at her swollen bottom lip. 

Mother Giselle smiled. “They have that luxury thanks to you.” Eleine cocked her head. Perhaps she shouldn’t have helped them then. Annoying twits. “The enemy could not follow,” Giselle continued, “and with time to doubt we turn to blame. Infighting may threaten us as much as this Corypheus.” 

Eleine groaned as she pushed herself up further, manoeuvring away from Sven. The boy’s brow was a mess of lines. Considering how angry she was at being woken up, she knew she was the last person to be able to settle disputes. She could not imagine the strain that had brought about the tempers of her advisors. Mother Giselle seemed to know what she was thinking and nodded her head.

“Another heated voice won’t help – even yours.” She paused. “Perhaps especially yours.”

Eleine smirked. No, she was not known for her emotional control. 

Mother Giselle looked to the tent entrance, and Eleine took the chance of her distraction to rub at the lines on Sven’s forehead. She frowned. They didn’t lessen. “Our leaders struggle because of what we survivors witnessed.” Mother Giselle looked back to her, eyes sharp. “We saw our defender stand… and fall.” Eleine withheld a scoff at the term ‘defender’. “And now we have seen her return.” Eleine forced her legs to move, one at a time, over the side of the cot. 

“The more the enemy is beyond us, the more miraculous your actions appear.” 

There was nothing glorious about the way she had crawled her way out of the cavern and hobbled up the mountain. There was nothing to praise her for. Again and again they misunderstood her. Why could they not see that she had not chosen to be here, before them now? With a sickly green curse on her hand? With some fate of duty and responsibility to people who would condemn her should they know the things she had done? 

Why did everyone seem to believe she was some benevolent Herald? 

“And the more our trials seem ordained.” Mother Giselle helped her rub some feeling into her legs. “That is hard to accept, no? What we have been called to endure, what we perhaps must come to believe?” 

Eleine sighed. “Mother Giselle, I just don’t see how what I believe matters. Lies or not, Corypheus is a real physical threat.” She knew just how physical better than anyone. “We cannot match that with hope alone.” She heaved herself up, swaying on numb legs. She took sharp breaths, and exited the tent. She made it all of five steps, before slouching on a nearby wagon to suffer through waves of pain. Eleine rose a brow as she caught sight of Leliana slumped on the ground, legs drawn up to her chest. 

If the Spymaster was showing that much despondent emotion, things really must be bad. Josephine sat on a bench beside her, rubbing at her neck. Cullen bumbled uselessly beside a tent, the most inactive she had seen him since they met in the war room all those months ago. And Cassandra, poor, devoted Cassandra, stood glaring over a map. Eleine sighed again. 

Eleine’s head snapped back to the tent to see Mother Giselle walk out of it, voice raised in song. Her voice was magnified through the silence of the Inquisition camp, and it trapped Eleine, forcing her to hear what the woman had to convey. 

Leliana’s voice, light and pleasing, split through the night. And soon others too, mingling with hedging hope in their tones. Eleine was taken by the sound of Cullen’s voice. It rent the air, carrying through all the rest to her ears. Listening to his rich cadence, she remembered those last thoughts of hers before she had almost died. His silhouette, red cast against the white of the mountains and tan of the tents, was seared into her eyes. 

_Look away_ , she told herself, _look away._ But she could not. She could not stop the creeping of something into her stomach. It was more than the coiling of lust in her core that she usually had. It was more, and yet at the same time it was less. 

The song tapered off, and she recoiled from the bodies that swarmed around her. The look in their eyes, reverent, hopeful, was reprehensible. She took a step back, revolted, as they fell to their knees before her. 

She was caged by their voices, the cacophony of their faith. Her hands clenched around her arms. She was terrified. It could not be true. It could not. Solas had been… he had been misled. 

They would never place her as their leader. 

She could never be responsible for this many lives. 

How was someone as tainted as her, as wicked as her, supposed to help people like this?

From across the camp, she met Solas’ eyes. Pure terror, insidious and debilitating radiated within her. His eyes held that predators gleam, and she wished she could understand the thoughts in his head. She wished he had been wrong. 

She should have died. 

“An army needs more than an enemy,” Mother Giselle said beside her, “it needs a cause.” Eleine ignored the woman. This army did not need her. At least not at the helm. Solas swept past her.

“A word.” 

More like a whole litany of them. Eleine followed after him stiffly. Her body complained each movement and her heart thudded in dread. She wanted nothing more than to sink into a bath and plan her escape. Eleine passed Cullen on their way through the camp, and those amber eyes met hers. Neither looked away till the other was out of sight, and she wondered what the moment had meant. 

Eleine trudged through the snow up to the outcropping on which Solas stood. The elf waved his fingers, and veilfire sprung up into a sconce beside him. She eyed the shadows the blue flames cast. 

Solas turned to place her under those intense eyes. “A wise woman – worth heeding.” She tracked his stance. Hands behind his back, Solas was either intending to appear unthreatening, or was truly not trying to pick a fight with her again. It would be a miracle if the latter. 

“Her kind understand the moments that unify a cause,” the elf considered, “or fracture it.”

They both had pressing issues to address. Eleine wanted to demand he do something about their shared suspicions that she would be— Maker she could not even think about it without feeling ill. 

Solas beat her to his concern first. “The orb Corypheus carried,” he hurried, “the power he used against you – it is elven.” Eleine raised a brow and cocked her hip. Eyes sharp on his face, she let him continue. “Corypheus used the orb to open the breach. Unlocking it must have caused the explosion that destroyed the conclave.” She tracked the careful neutrality on his face, her intuition tingling that something was amiss with this. “I do not yet know how Corypheus survived – nor am I certain how people will react when they learn of the orbs origin.” 

She still felt uneasy that this was what he was troubled about, though it was a fair concern. He sounded like a man confessing his sins before they were found out and made worse by his silence later. She tilted her head to the side, measuring his reactions. “Alright. What is it and how do you know about it.” They weren’t questions. Something like approval flashed in his eyes. 

“They were Foci,” he answered, “used to channel ancient Magicks. I have seen such things in the fade, old memories of older magic.” Impassive, smooth, unsuspicious. And yet suspicious, for its perfection. “Corypheus may think it Tevinter – his empire’s magic was built on the bones of my people.” A bell went off within her. “Knowing or not he risks our alliance. I cannot allow it.” 

She considered him. “This whole mess is confusing. I can see how elves might be an easy target.” She had witnessed it herself. 

“History would agree,” Solas answered, his voice lighter, “but there are steps we can take to prevent such a distraction.” It was testament to the darkness in her that she immediately thought he was referring to murdering anyone who knew about the orb. 

Solas seemed to know where her thoughts had gone and any approval in his eyes dimmed. He looked at her, eyes harsh, and she crossed her arms. He shook his head, eyes softening. “I am coming to believe you may yet be shown a better way.” 

Eleine paused. She turned, looking over her shoulder at him. “You think you can undo two decades of a tortured soul?” The snow was crushed beneath her boots as she strode away. “Spare me, Solas.” 

There was no redemption for her. Not in this life, nor the next. 

“By attacking the Inquisition,” Solas’ voice snatched after her, “Corypheus has changed it… changed _you_.” Eleine paused, unease roiling in her stomach. “Scout to the north,” he continued, “be their guide. There is a place that waits for a force to hold it. There is a place where the Inquisition can build – _grow._ ” 

He had seen the panic in her eyes at their kneeling. He knew exactly what she had come to talk to him about. 

As she slipped back into the camp, she wondered why she had thought Solas could do anything about it in the first place. Sinking down in the corner of Sven’s tent, she scratched at her arms. 

She could always refuse. 

She could always run. 

A fire popped and cracked outside and the image of a flaming wagon shoved into her brain. She tried to bat it away, bat away what she knew it was telling her. She wrestled with herself all night, not sleeping for a moment. Her heart grew more and more twisted, knotting over feelings she didn’t usually have to contend with. 

Guilt. Self-loathing. These two she wasn’t completely unused to. But it was the resignation and the acceptance that she struggled with the most. 

At some point during the night Leliana slipped into the tent. “Forgive me, Herald.” The Spymaster halted. And Eleine knew what she wanted to say. What she regretted. But the truth was the woman had been right in her suspicions. Eleine was not _altruistic_. She was as self-serving as she was violent. As morally weak as her father. 

“I am grateful,” Eleine struggled, “for your fastidiousness. You would hardly be an adept spymaster if you did not doubt those in power.” _In power._

Eleine watched the sleeping body of Sven. Leliana made to leave, and Eleine turned to her. “How were those children left behind?”

The Spymaster paused, and looked back at her. Her eyes were heavy, swollen with lack of sleep and tragedy. “Their parents died in the attack.”

Eleine looked back at Sven. “Everyone else forgot them.” Everyone except Sven. She did not have the heart to call him _stupid boy_ anymore, though the pain in her chest thudded her belief of it. 

“I have no doubt the boy wished to make you proud.” The Spymaster left. 

Eleine felt a nail fold back and looked down to see she had still been scratching. She fisted her hands in the tatters of her robes. She brushed against her pouch, and felt an uncomfortable lump there. Exploratory fingers withdrew the burnt diary. 

She traced the lines of the book for minutes, using anything to distract her from the confusion wracking her core. She looked up, wary, as Adan came into the tent, copious vials in his hands and a tome. They stared at one another for a while. Eleine had neither the energy nor emotional stability to fight with him right now. She did not want to leave Sven’s side, however. 

But Adan did not say anything, gave no other indication that he cared about her presence other than to toss her a healing potion. She flipped the glistening bottle around and around in her hands as he sat down beside Sven and began administering herbs and the like. 

“You cannot have no more lyrium,” Adan gruffed, “not for a long time. Anymore and you’ll—“

“Grow addicted. I know.” 

He looked at her below heavy brows. “You are already addicted. It will take you months for your mana to begin regenerating as well naturally. You will have less than you ever had. You will be vulnerable.”

Her head hit the leather behind her. “We’re all vulnerable.” 

Adan turned back to Sven and they sat in silence for almost an hour. “Why were you outside of the Chantry?” she asked him at last. 

Adan paused, but did not turn back to her. “I saw you run back out for the boy.” 

“So what?” she snapped, “since when do you care about anyone but yourself?”

“You saved my life,” he answered, voice subdued. She eyed his hunched back. “The least I could do was save your sons.” 

Eleine ignored the tears spilling down her cheeks. Adan left after a few moments of gathering his things. He did not look at her. 

Eleine crawled to Sven’s side, and clasped his hand in hers. 

“Tell me, Sven. Tell me what I am.” 

But she received no answer. 

The wagon did not leave her, just as the Inquisition had not left her. They had led her to safety, cared enough to place markers that could also have lead enemies to them. 

Eleine tracked the spill of sunlight through a gap in the tents flaps. She stood.

Eleine swung into her advisors’ meeting and circled an area on the map with her finger. 

“Here,” she said, tapping it, “we go here.”

She met Cullen’s eyes from across the table. “What’s there?” he asked.

“A new haven.” For Sven. For her own saviours. For the redemption of her soul.


	9. Miasma

Eleine tracked the undulating snow hills and sheer mountain sides. The air whipped, ferocious, against their weary bodies. The horizon was obscured by mist and clouds, and she hated that their destination was not already in sight.

Pivoting, she looked back at the scattered Inquisition behind her. Mages fared better in their multitudinous robes, while troops rallied in the exertion. The few nobles they had demanded and demanded to be carried on carriages, but Eleine had offered them the alternative of freezing to death out in the mountains alone. Those wagons were for the children, the injured, the elderly and supplies. Sera had cackled and cackled after her encounter with one masked Orlesian in which Eleine had lost her temper, telling the woman if she asked for more rations one more time, she would throw herself off the cliff face and she could follow an elf to safety. 

Josephine had spent an entire afternoon comforting that one. 

Cassandra trudged past her, the Seekers brow drawn tight. She had been irreplaceable with keeping the Inquisition driven and moving, her special brand of faith encouraging the stragglers and the dissenting. But even she was reaching the end of her patience. Eleine looked past her to Cullen’s heavy shoulders. She watched for a few moments longer than what could be understood as an innocent glance. 

She had been sexually frustrated for the last month – if not longer – and all her attempts to seek out satiation had led her back to the unavailable Commander. Many times, she had sought out other men and women, but become distracted by his form somewhere in the distance and trotted over to flirt with him instead. After Haven, something had shifted within Eleine, and she had become a new brand of desperate. With single minded focus, she had sought out Holland, trusting that he would be more than enough to quell the disquiet in her core. 

A few battered troops had alerted her that he had not survived. 

Eleine turned her back to the Inquisition, resuming her search for this place of Solas’ with manic fervour. 

 

_Papa and Mama are whispering again. Just around the corner. I can hear them, but not quite understand them. I know they mean to discuss the intruders._

_This is the fourth month now they have kept up the charade - that nothing has changed, when we all know it has. That family that took root in the Eastern Palace is a scourge on the Marches._

_I saw them once – just for a small moment. There were three boys, each as dark haired as they were mean looking. Heavy brows, hulking shoulders and forward sitting heads. When we first saw them we thought they to be commoners. Their manners and address are so rough, so caustic. But there is a certain breed of power in them that cannot be denied. No matter how Mama whispers in the ears of our neighbours._

_One of the boys spotted me as I crouched in our crystal grace. He was not quite so like his other brothers. His nose was straight and regal, with thinner brows that sat perched nobly above his eyes. I hid almost as soon as he saw me. I did not like the look in his eyes._

_Papa sent invitations to the Duke and Duchess to my birthday gala, but they turned it down. Turned down my twelfth birthday ball? How insidious are these creatures squatting in that palace? What better way could they possibly have to spend their time?_

_Mama says they speak to no one. Afford the company of no one. That the boys are perverted and strange._

_I hope to never have to encounter that family again._

Eleine glanced up at Sven’s rattling chest. She watched him for a few quiet moments, and closed the diary, setting the gilded book aside. She huddled in the corner of the ram hide tent, avoiding the company of the despondent Inquisition. 

She was not unaware of what they were whispering. What they were saying with their eyes. They had been travelling for too long without reward. Though Solas appeared unconcerned, it was not he who the people looked to. And to say she was a calm being to ground them, assume their troubles and seek solutions was ridiculous. 

Fools. Eleine sighed. If they were going to name her leader only on the merit that she was a capable soldier, they were truly a deluded bunch. To base their decision off some faith that she was Maker sent was even more absurd. If they could not tell how useless she was at a time like this, when they needed more than physical strength, but comfort and capability, there was no hope for the Inquisition. 

Eleine heaved to her feet. A few tentative steps and she hovered over the still form of Sven. She sat down by his side, a ginger thumb rubbing at the lines on his forehead. Her fingertips ghosted over his bald head, feeling the roughness of stubble beginning to appear. 

Two weeks… and he had not stirred. But she heard him crying in the fade. Heard him suffering and suffering. 

Without end and without help. 

Art had all but disappeared. Evaporated in his grief and shame into the alpines. Eleine rubbed at the gathering of pain above the bridge of Sven’s nose. She wondered if he would begin recovering if Art was beside him. Adan said that it was testament to Sven’s inner strength that he was hanging on at all. That all he needed now was the correct encouragement to wake. 

He had given her a rather sad smile when she asked what encouragement that was. 

Eleine stood and left the tent with one last look at Sven. She could not believe she had begun to be pitied for not knowing how to care for others. 

Eleine shadowed through the red hues of the Inquisition camp, avoiding main campfires and sprawling Mage gatherings. She was occasionally spotted, but she hurried off before she could be stopped. She skimmed past one particularly concentrated camp fire, and froze as their low spoken tones shot through her ears. 

Eleine hunkered down behind a tent and inched her way around the side for a better view. She eyed about twenty troops – a few Mages on the outskirts, but mostly skirmishers and soldiers. 

“— you saw ‘er fight, yeah? I ain’t never seen no magic like that.” Eleine sniffed at the dark look in the speaker’s eyes. Aged and grizzled, he sported a robust moustache that curved down the sides of his lips. “I was ‘ere with me buddy Red, aye.” 

A man across the fire nodded grimly, his blue eyes tinted orange by the flames before him. “We saws her take down five by ‘erself, yeah.” 

A bristling Mage at the back of the gathering flicked her robes cuff out of the way of her bowl. “You know what I saw her doing? Saving your inept asses.” 

“Shut yo mouth, Robes,” Red spat back, a blush splotching his cheeks. Eleine watched the Mage’s expression grow hard, her mouth drawing tight and stiff. Eleine flexed her fingers at the tension in the air. One move, and she would stomp out this pathetic display within seconds. Red would be scraping up their shit for the rest of his duty to the Inquisition if he took one more shot at the Mages. 

The Mages seemed to flurry like a hive of disturbed bees. But a young troop she did not recognise reached out and whacked Red on the back of the head. “Oi, you stupid oaf, ain’t no place for that in the Inquisition.” 

The tension still swirled around the gathering, but the Mages had released their tight holds on their staffs. 

The moustached man was not finished, however. “I’m just sayin, she’s a scary woman. I ‘eard she threatened ‘e Left Hand o’ the Divine.” 

The gathering quietened at that, even the woman mage who had defended her. Eleine sat back on her heels, eyeing them down her nose. 

“I… I saw her.” An elf spoke up from the back, bumbling and awkward. All eyes turned to him, and Eleine tensed. Saw her what? She contemplated interrupting, silencing whatever he had to say and drawing it out of him herself. Somewhere private. 

She clasped her arms. _Maybe you are not as good as I thought you were!_ She sunk her nails into her skin, rage a terrible thing in her veins. She stayed hidden. 

“What?” a young recruit asked, eyes wide over his bowl of dinner. The fire cracked and the group jumped. 

“Saw her crying over her son,” the elf mumbled, thin hands fiddling with his shirt. 

Humiliation, frosty and heated all at once, slammed through her. She felt her cheeks smart, and anchored herself on the fury of being encroached upon to carry her through the unknown emotion. She shot to her feet, blood pounding in her ears. “She– she was—“

“That’s enough there, lad,” an older woman chastised, and Eleine yanked herself back into the shadow of the tent. The woman leaned against a flag pole near the fire, stern eyes on the young elf. “That’s our Heralds business, and not to be gossiped about over dinner.”

Eleine was not satisfied with the mass of shame over the gathering. She wanted them to pay. She felt vulnerable and exposed. Raw and open to be picked at. 

“Besides,” the woman continued, and Eleine could pick out a mess of scars on her left cheek, “I could not be happier that our Herald is _scary_.” She sneered at the moustache man. “If we who are not in danger from her fear her, the terror she must inspire in our enemies makes me sleep at night.” 

Eleine loomed behind them, mind churning over various punishments. She listened to their murmurs of assent that sent her heart scuttling behind the safety of her ribs. 

“He really her son?” someone asked. 

“Dunno,” another replied, an Antivan accent rich in his cadence. “but I’m glad she has him.”

The scarred woman hummed in agreement. “At least now we know she can be kind.”

“I’d follow those flames anywhere into battle.”

“She pulled me out of the way of a Red Templar.”

“Saved my son, she did.”

“Wish she’d teach me how she makes her fire so hot.” 

“You see her tell those nobles to shove it when ‘ey asked for ‘at wagon? Told ‘em ‘ey were no better ‘en us little guys.”

Eleine strode into the middle of the camp. Sound immediately died, the voices sucked right out of their throats. Standing by the flames she turned, eyeing each bastard down. Fear, plain and raw carved into their faces. 

“Herald…” she heard the older woman begin, and she placed her too beneath her stare. 

“Oh?” she said, voice low, quiet and dangerous. “weren’t we having a good talk?” They averted their eyes and remained silent. “There’s no need to stop now, is there? Nothing you’re afraid to say to my face… hmm?” 

The moustached man lifted his head, defiance in his eyes. Eleine snapped her gaze to him, eyes daring. 

He dared. “Can’t expect us not t’ be bit worried.” 

Eleine laughed, a horrible, grating sound. “You think I’m going to creep into your tents at night and set you on fire?” 

The gathering fidgeted, unsure if they were allowed to enjoy the joke or not. They were not. Eleine glared them into place. 

Red piped up next, and she definitely had plans for him. “Maybe you’ll… miss.”

“Unlike the occupants of this camp fire…” she began, “I know who my enemy is.” She turned from the two idiots to survey the rest of the flickering faces. “You have my word. So long as you are true to this Inquisition – true to our goal… You have both my protection and my flames.” _Step out of line_ , she encouraged, _push me. Let me put you down._ No one spoke.

She sought out the face of the cowering elf that had mentioned her— she shut the thought off as soon as it sprung into her mind. She eyed him for a few tense moments. “You may gossip,” she warned, “say whatever you please to entertain yourselves. But swing that talk to Sven one more time and I will insure you’re talking to latrines the rest of your service.” 

The elf nodded, terrified. She gave them one last look, before slinking out to her original destination. She paused at the edge of the clearing. “Oh, and… Red? Was it?” She looked over her shoulder at him. “Be very careful who you discriminate against. Mages are human. We only take so much before we decide you’re not worth the effort of saving.” 

As she weaved her way through the tents to a quiet place, she passed by a snickering Varric. She spared him a glance. 

He grinned at her, cheek written plainly across his face. “Oh, now don’t give me that look, Terror. Tell me that Red is going to be stationed in the Fallow Mire.” 

She gave a sideways smirk. “Oh no, I have a much better idea.” 

Varric snorted. “I’m sure you do.” His hand clasped her arm and he drew her to a halt. She eyed the seriousness now lined into his face. “People will always talk about your son – talking is what we do, Terror. The more you tell them not to—“

She pulled his hand off her. “I know, Varric. As much as it turns my stomach, I know. And he’s not my son.” 

“Didn’t hear you tellin’ them that,” Varric returned, face still troubled, “if you wanted them to stop, threatening was the wrong way round it.” 

“Once again Varric,” she sighed, “I’m aware. _They_ will never be stopped. But that boy will never open his mouth to share what he saw again. And that is all that matters.” 

The dwarf gave a slow nod. “Caught you at a bad time?”

“If he saw what I think he did,” she chewed out, beginning to walk away, “very much so.” Varric did not follow her, and for that she was grateful. She did not want an audience to where she was going. 

Eleine sought out a silent place on the ledge of a nearby cliff face. She melted into the snow, hands digging in under it. She watched as it cooled the fire leaking out of her, steam and mist rising from the evaporating snow. She tended to the spluttering fire in her belly. So weak, so ephemeral. Her core was empty, burdened with silence when there had been such a raging fire weeks earlier. The back of her head throbbed the way it liked to do now. A little voice whispered from a dark place in her mind. Just one drop, it told her. That was all she needed. 

She didn’t have to be this weak anymore.

But she emptied her stomach further, ridding herself of all the mana remaining in her, just as she had every day since she had been told. 

Vulnerable she may be, but she would grow stronger. The further she pushed her mana, the more she pulled it taut, the more it would spring back. More, more. 

Maker she needed more lyrium. 

She heard the tell-tale crunch of company behind her. She withdrew her hands and straightened her posture. He had taken his time. For a pariah, he certainly liked to take his time seeking out solitude.

“Seems no one knows quite what to make of you,” Dorian commented, voice as smug and snarky as usual. “You are a true gem. What would we do without the entertainment you provide?” 

“Oh,” she sniped, “I’m sure you’d get yourself into one mess or another.” 

“None quite so brilliant as when you told that woman to follow the ‘halla rider’.”

“I’m afraid that is because no one is as brilliant as myself.” Dorian laughed, but she could detect the note of hollowness in it. She turned to him, eyeing his stiff stature. She looked back at the ravine beneath them, struggling with herself. “It… was not personal,” she forced out. 

“Hmm? Why I don’t think I know what you mean.” 

She sighed. “Kicking your friend.”

They were silent for a while, and Dorian came up close beside her. The brief thought that he may push her flitted through her mind, and she gave a dark smile. What kind of monster was she? 

She did feel guilt for hurting an unwell person. Especially one who was their ally. A good man, she was also sure. So why could she not say _sorry?_ Did she truly feel no remorse? Just a lingering parasite of consciousness that told her it had been wrong? 

She turned to Dorian. But the words died on her tongue. He watched her, and a flicker of disappointment went through his kohl lined eyes. He sniffed and with a flourish, retrieved a folded missive from his fashionable robes. 

She raised a brow, something telling her she would not like where this was going at all. “How did you receive that here?” 

“It arrived shortly after we returned to Haven,” he responded, “I never got to tell you before—“ he fell silent. “Before.” 

“Anything interesting?” she hedged. 

“A letter regarding Felix,” he said, brow stiff. He waited for her to respond for a few moments, and grew sardonic when she didn’t. “He went to the magisterium, stood on the senate floor and told them of you.” Her empty core roiled in unease. “A glowing testimonial, I’m informed,” Dorian continued, anger simmering in his voice. She was without words. 

She sat there, shocked, silent, as he rushed on, each word as biting as the last. “No news on the reaction but everyone back home is talking. Felix always was as good as his word.” 

She looked away at the heaviness beneath his voice. She knew, yet she had to ask. “Was?”

“He’s dead.” Eleine cocked her head back, eyes filling with the pricks of stars across the dark sky. She waited in silence for him to continue. “The blight caught up with him.” 

She struggled for what to say. “Are you alright?” 

Dorian was far more subdued than she had ever heard him. “He was ill… and thus on borrowed time anyhow.”

“Doesn’t mean you can’t regret his death,” she chided. Far better he regrets that than what had to be done with Alexius. 

“I know,” Dorian responded, but he sounded grateful. “Felix used to sneak me treats from the kitchens when I was working late in his father’s study.” Eleine looked back to see Dorian’s eyes distant, a small smile on his face. “’Don’t get into trouble on my behalf,’ I used to tell him. ‘I like trouble,’ he’d say. Tevinter could use more Mages like him. Those who put the good of others above themselves.” Eleine looked away, the implication of his words not lost on her. 

“He should not have tried to interfere,” she said, “Alexius did not deserve that protection.”

“Alexius was many things,” Dorian snapped, “but he was a good father. It is only natural to seek to protect those you care about.” 

She scoffed. “A man capable of such terrible things is hardly be a father to be proud of.” 

She could hear Dorian buzz behind her, an angry wasp. “Can you truly not understand the innate drive to help a family member?”

She shot to her feet and rounded on him, her old wounds ripped open and seeping. “No,” she thundered, “I cannot! Being conceived by someone’s loins does not necessitate loyalty. I am sorry, Dorian,” she cut her hand down, blood boiling, “that I was rough with someone dear to you – someone who was unwell and clearly a wonderful being. But I will not regret the _necessity_ of my actions. You do not stand before a blow without expecting to get hit!” 

Dorian looked away, and their heavy breathing filled the silence. Dorian rounded on her. 

“And in his place?” he demanded, “would you truly have done nothing if you saw your father about to be murdered?”

Eleine snapped. She was in Dorian’s face sooner than her mind had time to realise, and her voice drew thin, whipping around their secret place, cracking and breaking. “If it were _me_ , I’d be the murderer. _Me_ ,” she screamed. “It was a pleasure denied to me all those years ago – and one way or another Hagan’s death will be by my hands.” She beat at her chest. “Whether it is because the demons I did not check destroy him, or that I burn him myself—“ she shook her hands in his face, spit flying out of her mouth, “his blood on my hands will be a burden I revel in for the rest of my life!” 

Dorian stumbled back, shock whitening his pretty tanned face. She followed his every step away, hounding him. 

“Blood ties are _easily_ broken – family easily killed. There is no one who knows that better than me.” She blinked back tears at the hollowness in her core. She felt alone, weak, without the fire in her stomach. Where there would normally have been ash coating her throat, wisping out her nose, there was nothing but air. Since her life had careened into rage and pain, she had always had her magic. Had that brutality to steel her. It had been everything that she was. 

She whipped away from Dorian, stalking back to the ledge, fighting the confusion had simmered in her since Haven. She regretted the entirety of this encounter. She should have left him without an apology, or any semblance of one that she had intended to give him. 

Now she had broken the thin tether of comradery they had ever had. All because she was damaged, perpetually wounded and angry. She clutched at her arms. 

“I’m sorry, Dorian,” she mourned, “I’m sorry.” 

There were long, thick moments of silence, and she heard his shoes crunching away. The man sighed by her ear and she whipped her head around, surprised to find him beside her. 

“I am not exactly the man to preach about familial relations,” he relented, “and I am sorry, too, for bringing up something so painful to you.” She looked at him in wonder for a few moments, before growing self-conscious and looking away. 

“I am not… not what people want me to be,” she struggled, “not what they need me to be.”

The man sighed again, his snark lost now to the seriousness of her confession. “Perhaps you are not the glistening herald of the Maker that people expected you to be – but neither are you even close to the monstrosity of many of my own countrymen.” He placed a tentative hand on her shoulder. “I believe you are what we need. I hope we can be what you need, in return.” 

And with that Eleine sunk back down into the snow, alone. 

 

Eleine slipped back through the tents, clinging to the outskirts at the shadows. She was too raw, to drawn thin to manage another confrontation. The worst of her was leaking out. Her violence, her anger, her lack of mercy. She didn’t want to hurt anyone right now. 

_Such a ridiculous thought_ , a part of her whispered. _You always want to hurt people._

She rubbed at her arms, spasmodically clutching them as though she could shove all her demons back inside. Her eyes tracked the horizon for a distraction, seeking out the pale hues of dawn. The day was encroaching and she had not slept a wink. 

Today they would take no rests, no moments to catch their breath. She would run the Inquisition ragged. They needed to find safety, needed to ground themselves. Another day adrift and she, alongside the rest she was sure, would lose their sanity. 

She also wanted Sven set up somewhere warm, insulated and clean. He needed everything possible to help him heal. Mentally, emotionally— whatever it was stunting him from a return to the world beyond the veil. 

Art. She paused before Sven’s tent, hand frozen in its grab for the flaps. He needed Art. She shoved her hands under her arms and stormed back through the camp. One last venture, one last risk. She knew where he would be. Hiding amongst the other young recruits, speaking to no one and saying nothing. 

As Eleine picked her way through the snow laden ground, hurrying through the cluster of recruit tents, she ignored the eyes that followed her. She crafted her mask of indifference and let it comfort the aching vulnerability within her. Rounding the corner to where she suspected he would be huddled, alone, she almost lost her balance as she reared herself back into the shadows, unseen by the man crouched beside the boy. 

Cullen spoke to him in low tones, and though Art seemed to be grateful for the comfort, he had the expression of an inconsolable teen. She watched for a few moments, gutted, the gentle expression on Cullen’s face. 

That lingering bias in her murmured that it was surprised a Templar – ex or otherwise – could be capable of such tenderness. Then she checked herself. She had known from the moment she had seen him in that war room, hands on the hilt of his sword and eyes wide with hope, that he was a man of upstanding morals. He was unlike those she had met before. Unlike anyone she had ever desired. 

She let herself bask in the warmth of his expression for a while longer, knowing it would never willingly be placed upon her – no matter how much she had come to crave it. She shook off as much of her volatile energy as possible, hoping that this would not be such a chaotic conversation as the one previous. 

Art’s face crumpled as he caught sight of her, and Cullen froze mid-sentence, mouth open. She gave him a nod, avoiding eye contact. 

“Herald,” he acknowledged, returning the nod. 

Art made to leave, and she boxed him in, trapping him against a tent with her eyes and stance. Cullen cleared his throat, no doubt intending to come to the miserable boy’s defence, but she cut him off. 

“You will train harder than the rest,” she threatened, “you will work yourself to your pale bones. You will be worthy of Sven. You will not fail him again.” Art watched her, eyes wide and shinning with tears. “And you will stay by his side. You are to protect that boy with your life. Vow it. Vow it to me.” Art’s legs trembled and he nodded his heavy head, tears slipping from the cage of his closed eyelids. She felt Cullen take a position by her side, and the corner of her visions showed a faint smile on his lips. 

“I think a visit to him is overdue, don’t you?” she ordered.

“Aye— aye, it is,” Art sobbed and Eleine enjoyed the way Art scampered off, almost running to see Sven. 

“Art is a very devoted boy,” Cullen commented, voice lighter than she had heard it in weeks. “Sven has found himself a good brother in arms.” 

Eleine rolled her eyes. “While I hate to bring you bad news, Commander, I feel it only right I inform you that Sven is no longer a part of the army.” 

She turned to him fully to see his shadowed face in an easy smile. She ripped her eyes off that scar on his lip for what felt like the hundredth time. “I am aware,” he returned, and she raised a brow. “I happened to see him present you with his first loaf of baked bread.” 

Eleine felt her cheeks flush with embarrassment. Unlike the irritation and revulsion she had felt at the gathering knowing intimate moments between her and Sven, she found she did not mind so much that Cullen knew. Something thudded in her that she did not need to hide from him the things she cared for. 

She grew unhappy as the images of a bumbling, nervous Sven fiddling with something behind his back knocked into her mind. She could still see clearly the worry on his brow as she held out her hand for whatever he was hiding. The clearing of his expression into something far more open, raw and ecstatic when she had tousled his wild hair, thanking him for the delicious dinner was something she would never forget.

That wide, wide smile that stretched his freckled cheeks taunted her alongside the overbearing image of a catatonic Sven, still and suffering. 

“I’m sorry,” Cullen whispered, and she refocused to find him watching her, eyes sad. She reeled herself back in. 

“Thank you for attempting to reconcile Art. You outdo yourself, Commander.” She gave him a nod before turning on her heel and making for Sven’s tent. 

Finally, on its threshold, she remembered that there was now another boy inside. She paused, and shook her head, escaping to a shadowed corner somewhere beneath a distant tree. 

 

She had been true to her decision, pushing the Inquisition past its limits, past its energy. They complained in vast numbers. Children cried, the elderly retreated into silence. Troops and Mages lagged, the nobles beyond reconciliation. 

She refused to relent. No matter the soft tones Josephine talked to her with, the imploring looks Cullen gave her, or the words of sense from Solas, she insisted they keep going. The fact that they did what she ordered in the end, was indication enough of what was to be her fate. She used the exertion of scrambling up cliff faces and peering around valleys for some unknown place to distract from the terror that that knowledge caused her. 

Solas drew up beside her as the light began dripping from them, the sky yielding to darker hues. At first she thought he intended to argue with her, ask again that they be allowed respite. But the expression on his face was open, happy and relieved. 

She hurried around the side of a jagged peak, and lost all her breath at the sight before her. Colossal, ruined and magnificent, a castle nestled atop a plateaued mountain. 

They were delivered. 

Eleine looked behind her to the staggering Inquisition. 

They heard her cry, and they answered in rallying cheers.


	10. Nug In A Trap

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to say thank you all so much for commenting, leaving kudos, bookmarking and subscribing. To the lastusernameonearth, especially, thank you. You have supported me since the beginning and I cannot put into words just how much that means to me. You're all so wonderful and I hope I can keep writing things you enjoy! 
> 
> <3

Eleine fiddled with the blanket around Sven, tightening and loosening it, unsure what would be most comfortable for him. Eventually, though, she had to sit back on her heels, and face the issues pressing into her skull. There was a great clamouring outside of the little room they were tucked into; the Inquisition had begun setting up. Despite the late hour, the people had rallied, insistent on being comfortable and warm. 

She blew out a puff of air, surveying to room she had sequestered them to the instant they deemed the place safe. It was dusty – lined with decades of abandon in dirt and rubbish. A few broken pieces of furniture, as rustic as they were wooden, rotted and filled the air with a musky stench. Unfortunately, this was the best place she could find him in such short notice. She wanted him warm, something the air outside would not afford him – unless he dried up beside a fire. 

She ghosted her fingers over his forehead. Adan would be in shortly to provide him with the liquids and sustenance he needed. But even then… Eleine could see the hollowness of his cheeks, the tautness of his skin over his torso. They were losing him. She would enlist someone to clean the room as much as possible, and then she would watch him tonight. As she always did. 

There was a knock on the door and she looked up to see Tamoren poke his malformed head into the room. She rose a brow, but motioned him inside. She swung to her feet, arms crossing. 

“Where is Adan?” 

Tamoren waved a meaty hand unhelpfully, already beginning to examine Sven. “He’s helping.” 

Eleine felt a prickle of irritation. “And you know how to handle Sven?” she demanded. 

Tamoren looked up at her. “Yes. As well as an alchemist.”

Eleine sniffed, allowing him to get back to work. But where she would leave Adan in peace and help outside, she watched Tamoren closely. “Where were you, during the attack on Haven?” 

Tamoren stilled and looked at her over his bulbous shoulder. “The moment I heard the bells I found Clemence and hid in the Chantry.” She kept his gaze for a few heavy moments. She widened her stance, but he gave no indication that he was lying. 

Before she could sniff at him further, Adan slammed into the room, harried and rushed. “Ah,” he took in Tamoren, “good, you’re already here. let’s do this quickly—“ he caught sight of her and looked irate. “What are you still doin’ here? Get out there – they need you.”

She rolled her eyes and picked her way through the rubble to the door way. “Well,” she waved behind her, “don’t have too much fun without me.” 

The brunt of their situation slapped her in the face the moment she was outside the room. 

The Inquisition was a mess. People swarmed about, handling supplies and arguing. She rubbed her eyes as days without sleep itched behind them. 

“Herald—“ someone called to her, and she was swept up in the preparation. The night rolled into full force by the time they had finished assembling and delegating places for rest, for food and for latrines. 

Eleine carted a handful of blankets to Adan, giving the man a light pat on the back when she noticed he was dozing. Annoyed, the alchemist grumbled, but took them nonetheless. She began trudging her way back to Sven in his room by the gates. The moment the door closed behind her, Eleine’s world teetered sharply, and she staggered against the wall. Her legs gave out, and she slumped to the ground. Breathing heavily, she nursed her agonised limbs. She could not make it to Sven’s side. 

With her vision eclipsing, she could no longer deny her body the rest it needed. Her eyes splotched, colours exploding alongside white rings. She watched the show of phantoms as she was swept away into the fade, weak, vulnerable and pained. 

 

She woke, aching and sore, her neck stiff and cracking. She fumbled against the wall, scrabbling her way up to her feet. She took slow steps to Sven’s side, lowering herself to sit on the edge of his cot. 

He had been almost silent last night. Albeit her focus had been scattered. Without her mana, her connection to the fade was wretched. But from the time she had spent with him, he had been almost calm. A wry smile arched her lips. 

Perhaps the reunion with Art had healed him more than all her attention ever could. 

There was a knock on the door and she swiped at her face, scrubbing away as much of the night before as she could. Pulling out her dark, thick strands of hair from the band it was in, she hitched it back up into its customary pony-tail. As she made her way to the door, she fingered the thin braids she had made days ago at the sides of her head. They were raggedy and falling apart, no doubt going to cause her insurmountable levels of grief the next bath she had. 

Eleine opened the door, shielding her eyes from the onslaught of light and poked her head out. Adan drooped against the wall outside, hands shaking over the supplies clutched in his fingers. She eyed the herbs, smelly and potent as they always were. She tapped Adan on the shoulder. 

“Maker.” He rubbed at his eyes. She surveyed the hustle of the Inquisition. Her eyes swept up to the sky. Noon, already. 

She eyed Adan. “Rest again after this.”

He shot her a dirty look. “I must—“

“Rest,” she ordered, “or I will make you.” 

Adan blinked at her tone, but eventually acquiesced, giving a jagged nod. She gave him a pat on the shoulder, before catching sight of her advisors. They huddled together, murmuring about something or rather. They look drawn, serious and weary. But not unhappy, she noticed, at the uptilt of Cullen’s lips as he saw her staring. 

They all followed Cullen’s gaze, and Cassandra waved her over. Eleine bid a tired farewell to Adan, receiving no reply, and swayed her way over to them. As she drew closer, everyone but Cassandra dispersed, and the Seeker waited for her with her hands behind her back. Eleine cocked her head to the side. 

Interesting.

Eleine watched Cullen go, enjoying the way he moved far too much. A thin, frail body hunkered past Cullen and obscured her view, and Eleine looked to Cassandra, confused. She had never seen such a person before in all their travels and time in Haven. Cassandra followed her questioning eyes, and smiled in amusement. 

“They arrive daily from every settlement in the region,” she answered, but Eleine felt the statement raised more questions than they clarified. Daily? They’d only been here for one night. Right? At her turmoil Cassandra gave her a kind tilt of her head. “You had much rest to catch up on. We would have moved you, but anytime we tried you attacked us.” Eleine hardly cared. All she was concerned about was how long she had been out. Again, Cassandra gave her an answer to her unspoken question. “Today is the second day since we found Skyhold.” Eleine sighed and rubbed at her own forehead. Maker, she must really need a bath. “It has become a pilgrimage,” Cassandra continued, her Nevarran accent soothing the ache in her head. 

Cassandra began moving away, and Eleine followed, suspicious of where this was going. “If word has reached these people, it will have reached the Elder One,” Cassandra commented over her shoulder to Eleine as she began leading her up stairs Eleine had not even noticed had been there the night (nights?) before. “We have the walls and numbers to put up a fight here, but this threat is far beyond the war we anticipated.” 

Eleine clutched at her arms, far more aware of the brevity of the situation than anyone else in the Inquisition. There was hearing about the devil, then there was seeing the devil. 

And as her mind filled with the form of a crystal torn ghoul, Eleine knew she had seen the devil. 

They stepped beneath the shadow of an overhanging bridge to the main hall of Skyhold, and Cassandra stopped, turning to her. “But we now know what allowed you to stand against Corypheus – what drew him to you.” Eleine had the distinct impression that Cassandra was running off on another _Andraste’s Chosen_ rant. She stomped down on that before it could bud. 

She lifted her marked hand, waving it beneath the Seeker’s nose. “He came for this,” she insisted, “and now it’s useless to him so he wants me dead. That’s it.” She eyed the Nevarran woman sternly. 

“The Anchor has power,” the woman agreed, but Eleine heard further argument in her voice, “but it is not why you are still standing here.” Cassandra began walking away again, and somewhat irate, only thinking about scampering off to bathe, Eleine followed. “Your decisions let us heal the sky – your determination brought us out of Haven—“ they rounded the corner to find more stairs. “You are the creatures rival because of what _you_ did.” They began making their way up the stairs. Eleine tried to hide as much of her discomfort as possible. “And we know it.”

Cassandra looked back at her, the Seeker’s eyes a few shades from reverent but dark with respect. “All of us,” she declared. 

Eleine looked past her to see a half bowing Leliana bearing a large, ostentatious sword. She lost all the air in her lungs. She felt somewhat like a nug lead into a trap. It was far too late to run, but her eyes still tracked the ledge of the stairs, wondering how well her legs would manage if she vaulted from them. 

Cassandra led her to Leliana, hand on her lower back. She must have seen the panic in her face, and Eleine hurried to stuff the emotion back beneath her mask. “The Inquisition requires a leader,” Cassandra was saying, and Eleine fought of a brief spell of dizziness. 

Just as she had said before. It was one thing to hear something, it was another to face it. She may have thought she was ready for this eventuality, but plopped before it now with no warning… she would much rather slip and behead herself on that blade. 

Leliana held out the blade to her, and Eleine eyed the writhing dragon hilt with no small amount of distaste. “The one who has _already_ been leading it,” Cassandra continued, and Eleine could think of a plethora of arguments at that last point. 

She had shot some fireballs at enemies, that was not the same as being responsible for the lives and deaths of hundreds— if not coming thousands. She warred with herself. 

Her head snapped to the right, her ears pricking with noise. Her stomach lining eroded away as those hundreds of faces turned upwards to watch her, hope and belief shinning on their mud streaked visages. She saw her companions among the crowd – Sera, grinning from ear to ear beside a grim but not unhappy looking Blackwall. A perfectly neutral Vivienne, edging away from some dirty soldiers. Dorian at the back of the group, as always, leaning against a piece of rubble. Bull, hulking alongside his Chargers. And Solas beside Varric, their faces a mix of amusement and expectation. Cole she saw for only a moment as he flickered in and out between the crowd. 

They could not all support this, surely?

Her eyes, as was their wont to do, sought out the Commander. There he stood, regal in a Ferelden way with his fur mantle and armour. Even from afar she could see the smile on his lips. 

He would want a Mage as his leader? 

She looked away, stomach and knees weak. Still her libido had the energy and room to consider whether he would be amicable to relieving some tension in the both of them.

Cassandra was behind her, and Eleine hid the small jolt of surprise she had when the Seeker spoke in her ear. “You,” the woman finished, voice kind. 

A thousand thoughts stuttered through her mind. She wanted to demand why they did not care she was a Mage— would this not damage the Inquisition’s reputation? Instead she could not move her brain past the shock that all these people supported the decision. 

She had heard well enough what they thought of her – heard it only a few nights ago in fact. Did they not fear her? Think her dangerous and unpredictable? Were these the qualities they wanted for a leader? 

“It’s unanimous?” she heard herself ask, somewhere off in the distance. “You all have that much… confidence in me?” Did they all want to die? Was that it? 

She rounded on Cassandra, desperate and brimming with hysteria. 

“All of these people have their lives because of you,” the Seeker answered, and Eleine turned back to properly look at the people before her. She had never considered… receiving gratitude. “They will follow.” 

“That wasn’t the question,” Eleine hounded. 

“I will not lie,” Cassandra began, “handing this power to anyone is troubling. But I have to believe this is meant to be.” There was one thing Eleine knew well, and that was that the Inquisition was desperate. Perhaps not fools, she considered, but desperate. 

Inordinately so if she was their best option to rule them. 

Eleine took her own steps towards Leliana, and the fact that it was the Spymaster handing over the symbol of power, the sword, was by no small amount amusing to Eleine. What a message, Leliana was sending. She who had contested Eleine the most, openly and loudly, was the one bowing her head and approving. 

“There would be no Inquisition without you,” Cassandra vowed, “how it will serve, how you lead, that must be yours to decide.” Eleine eyed the sword and all it meant. She felt that reaching out her hand, fingers splayed, and grasping the weapon, was going to brand her far deeper than the green on her palm. While the power the mark had afforded her had not moved her to devotion of any kind…

Perhaps the promise she would make now, would. 

The weight of the sword was beyond description. The feel of it in her right hand, bare and scarred, was simultaneously cold and hot. She fingered the smoothness and the ridges of the designs on the hilt, lifting it so she could see her reflection on the blade. 

Dishevelled, weary and lined, her normally beautiful face was almost unrecognisable. It was not the reflection she had seen in that puddle of blood. 

The brief thought flashed through her mind, wondering what they would do if she started lopping off heads all of sudden. Swing – oops, there goes the Spymaster – slash, oh dear, Cassandra’s in half. Eleine hastened to reply before they noticed her period of distraction. The promise of vengeance pounded in her, rushing to her tongue. 

_Each day, and each night, I wonder what sort of leader you will turn out to be._

She swallowed the words, and quietened the hate in her blood. What had he warned her of? _Executioners above the law_? She let out a jagged breath. 

She could not lead with anger, or she would taint the purpose of the Inquisition beyond redemption. 

“Corypheus will never let me live in peace,” she heard herself say instead, “he made that clear. He intends to be a god.” Scorn rippled through her. “To rule over us all.” She watched as those faces grew in animation beneath her, a few nodding, others murmuring their assent. “Corypheus must be stopped,” she avowed. 

“Wherever you lead us,” Cassandra promised behind her. The Seeker drew up beside her. “Have our people been told?” she called.

Josephine stepped forward, face glowing. “They have. And soon – the world.” 

“Commander,” Cassandra boomed, “will they follow?” Eleine held her breath, feeling her stomach pressing against her throat. 

Cullen smiled, and turned to the people. “Inquisition,” he addressed, voice that particular brand of authority she loved to hear from him, “will you follow?” The people yelled back, fists shooting into the air. Eleine felt her heart pound. “Will you fight?” Cullen charged, arms raising. The Inquisition roared. “Will we triumph?” Eleine saw Tamoren raise Clemence’s arm in the next cheer and his thundering voice joined the masses’. 

“Your leader,” Cullen drew his sword, “your Herald.” His blade pointed at her heart. “Your Inquisitor!” Their cries were a cacophony that stroked the smouldering fire in her core. Eyes locked in Cullen’s she gave them their answer, their promise. 

Eleine thrust the sword into the air, her heart stilling. Her core hardened, molten steel taking shape once more into the brand of fire and passion. No more apologies. No more regrets, no more guilt. She would offer no more than what she was. 

She could never change that sick part of her that revelled in violence, that desired to feel others suffer beneath her hands. Neither could she reverse the pumping hatred she held towards her family and those of their ilk. She would always be volatile, an open flame ready to burn anything that came too close without her permission. 

One way or another she was what they had chosen. The consequences of that decision rested on their shoulders. 

All she had to agonise over now was ensuring she made these people see the other side of war. 

This was her purpose now. She was a weapon; she was a leader.

Their screams echoed in her ears for days. 

She was the Inquisitor. 

 

Eleine and Cullen pushed the doors to the hall open, and she could feel his eyes burning on the side of her face. She strode ahead, eyeing the despondent condition of the castle. She was all the while aware of eyes pricking into her. 

Perhaps he had not meant to turn her down? 

“So this is where it begins,” Cullen wondered. 

“It began in the courtyard,” Leliana contested, “this is where we turn that promise into action.”

“But what do we do?” Josephine asked, and Eleine could hear the familiar scratch of her quill against parchment. “We know nothing about this Corypheus except that he wanted your mark.” 

Eleine observed the tattered throne that perched before them on a stone dais. That was hers now. A leader. What drivel. What nonsense. 

What a terrifying reality. 

Eleine turned to face her advisors. She cocked her hip, and crossed her arms. “Corypheus wants to restore Tevinter,” she addressed Cullen, delighting in the warmth of his tawny eyes, “is this a prelude to war with the Imperium?”

“I get the feeling we’re dealing with extremists,” he responded, maintaining eye-contact for perhaps longer than he ever had, “not the vanguard of a true invasion.”

“Tevinter is not the Imperium from a thousand years ago,” Josephine agreed, “what Corypheus yearns to restore no longer exists.” She gave a wry smile. “Though, they would shed no tears if the south fell to chaos, I’m certain.” 

Eleine considered this for a while. It was war with Corypheus and his deranged Templars and Venatori. If it remained that alone, they had a chance. If Tevinter joined in… they would have bigger issues to contend with. She sucked on her teeth. “Someone out there must know something about Corypheus.”

“Unless they saw him on the field,” Cullen refuted, shaking his head, “most will not believe he even exists.” Frustrating, but true, Eleine knew. 

“We have one advantage,” Leliana delighted, eyes sharp, “we know what he intends to do next.” Leliana addressed her. “In that strange future you experienced Empress Celene had been assassinated.”

Eleine felt her core broil at the mention of that dark future. She still had yet to deal with Alexius. _Let him rot for a while longer_ , she thought. _Let him suffer_. 

“Imagine the chaos her death would cause,” Josephine worried, and Eleine did not have to think about it too hard, “with his army—“

“An army he’ll bolster with a massive force of demons,” Cullen interjected, “or so the future tells us.”

“Corypheus could conquer the entire south of Thedas,” Josephine finished, “god or no god.” 

Eleine turned her back to them, looking to the throne before her. Leliana sighed behind her. “I’d feel better if we knew more about what we were dealing with.” 

Eleine spun around at the sound of Varric’s voice. “I know someone who could help with that.” He stopped before them, face a concoction of contrition and determination. “Everyone acting all inspiration jogged my memory so I… I sent a message to an old friend.”

Eleine rose a brow as Varric continued. “She’s crossed paths with Corypheus before and may know more about what he’s doing. She can help.” 

Eleine eyed the dwarf with suspicion. Why did he look so nervous? Just who was this woman? “I’m always looking for new allies,” she said, voice only slightly sarcastic, “introduce me.” 

Varric looked behind him anxiously, and Eleine grew even more apprehensive. “Ahh,” the dwarf began, “parading around might cause a fuss. It’s better for you to meet privately.”

Eleine felt her eyebrow disappear into her hair line. “On the battlements,” Varric continued, “trust me. It’s complicated.” The man ambled away, and she looked to her advisors with no small amount of exasperation. 

“Well,” Josephine commented, “we stand ready to move on both of these concerns.” She did maybe. Eleine needed a maker damned bath. 

“On your order, Inquisitor,” Cullen said, and her head snapped over at the title. _Inquisitor_. She couldn’t say she didn’t like the way it sounded coming from his lips. 

“I know one thing,” Leliana smirked, “if Varric has brought who I think he has… Cassandra is going to kill him.”

Before Eleine could demand further answers a petulant voice rang out from the hall entrance. Eleine eyed the masked Orlesian’s with disdain. A sentiment they seemed to share for her new outpost. “Zis is ze Inquisition?” the obsidian masked man scorned, “a dusty old ruin with battered soldiers?” 

The woman beside him flustered, seeing Eleine and her advisors while the man had not. “If you shut your mouth and open your eyes, you’d zee zat ze Inquisition is our one hope.” Eleine watched the man bristled, amused. Eleine leaned over to Josephine as the couple bumbled off somewhere to no doubt complain about the mess. 

“Who were they?” she queried.

“Comte Larryal and Comtesse Dardemon, cousins and recent admissions to the Inquisition’s allies,” Josephine answered, brow drawn over the insults to Skyhold. Eleine rolled her eyes. Cleaning the place up would take time, there was no need to agonise over it yet. 

Speaking of cleaning up. Eleine turned to Cullen. “Is it too much for me to hope that a bath has been acquisitioned?” 

Cullen smiled. “Actually, you’re in luck. I will have it cleaned and readied for you within the hour.”

 _Ohh_ , she almost purred aloud, _now that was what I needed to hear_. Before that though, she had to check up with each of her companions. 

“If there is nothing further to discuss?” she asked, and Leliana shook her head.

“Go,” the Spymaster lilted, “there is much to do.”

Indeed, there was. 

Eleine tackled Vivienne first, knowing talking to her last would leave her tanging with bitterness. She had enjoyed putting the woman’s offer of advice down until the damned Orlesian looked happy that Eleine had done it. Eleine scuttled away from there as soon as possible. Bull had suggested mixing in with the soldiers, but she had given him such an incredulous look he had abandoned the idea. There was no way they would not recognise her. She had only just stood before them minutes ago. Sera was as much of a delight as she always was. Happy, unpredictable and amusing. 

Blackwall was positively dry and grim, and Eleine finished up there as soon as she could too. When she came upon Solas, Vivienne and Cole, things became complicated. She was predisposed to ignore whatever words Madame de Fer blessed them with, and did allow Cole to stay, despite her own agitation at his unclear nature. Solas was well acquainted with spirits, and she trusted him to keep this one mostly under control. 

She could always deal with the boy later. He was rather amusing in the sense that his naiveté meshed so terribly with how well he rammed a knife up someone’s ribs in front of her. Dorian, she could not find, but was sure was fine as a fiddle. 

At last she sunk into the bath Cullen had prepared for her, and as the warm water smothered her aches and pains, Eleine let herself think long and hard about the challenges ahead. 

Mostly, she dreaded the responsibility she now held. 

She wondered if her father would hear of her appointment. Eleine traced the ridges of the bath with her thumb. She felt her magic coiling in her belly. 

She wondered if one day soon she would be powerful enough to stamp him out of existence forever. It had been many years since she was the child sobbing on the gilded floor, begging for him to have a shred of morality. 

Eleine puffed out some ash through her mouth, enjoying the way it fell onto the film of water, staining it. 

She forced her mind to other issues, and spent the rest of her bath considering her next move. Three weeks, she would appoint to the set-up of Skyhold. They needed supply lines, allies, plans and training. 

Three weeks, she had to recover. 

Then after that, mana or no, she would set out to eradicate lingering rifts and whatever weasels of Templars and Venatori she found. 

Eleine submerged herself in the water, tasting ash on her tongue. 

Whatever was coming, she had to be ready.


	11. Intrusive Thoughts

A week’s time left her in the blink of an eye. Between copious meetings and manual labour, Skyhold had already begun taking shape. Eleine spent most of her time in Josephine’s office, bartering against the allowance of certain nobles she knew to be insidious into the Inquisition. What remained she dedicated to interacting with the people, helping them get settled and assigned. 

Their numbers were swelling beyond the rate they could keep up with. Eleine found she spent most nights awake, hunched over a table with Leliana, discussing the backgrounds of certain individual’s attempting to join them. Over the period of a week, Eleine had found that it was very much different working with advisors that neither suspected you nor hounded you for details you weren’t comfortable sharing. Work progressed at an alarming speed, and Eleine knew it would not slow down anytime soon. 

Sven had not woken, though she crawled her way to his room at least once every day. They were running out of time, and Eleine had asked that a more adept healer be sent for, making sure to alert Adan without insinuating he was incapable. 

The man had taken it inordinately well. 

A week in, two left, and Eleine was already exhausted. 

She tracked the growing shadows stretching across the room. Her eyes ached, a steady thrum of pain beginning behind them. They had been at it for hours, bickering over the smallest details of the smallest plans. Little disputes in Val Royeaux sending Josephine into fits of worry, agitating Cullen and amusing Leliana. After five hours, Cullen reached his limit. 

“I have much more important things requiring my time. If you’ll excuse me.” It was the most impatient she had ever heard him. He had even forgotten the usual “Inquisitor” he sent her way before leaving. She felt somewhat irritated by missing out on that quiet word. 

He was out the door before Josephine could insist he stay. 

“Oh let him go, Josie. Poor Cullen has a lot on his plate,” Leliana laughed. 

“Yes… yes I suppose you are right,” Josephine sighed. She did not seem deterred from agonising over whether or not the offer of assisting the colour coordination of a certain comte’s ball was too rash, however. Half way through a lilting rant, Leliana laughed and started fanning Josephine’s face. 

“How about a break?” Leliana smirked, “Just a moment or two to take a breath.”

Eleine sagged in relief, her usual attempt at poise ignored in favour of tending to her exhaustion. 

Josephine, too, seemed to let some tension drain from her shoulders, putting down her clipboard for perhaps the first time in the week. “Yes,” she sighed, “I think that would be lovely. I am not used to just…”

“Not working?” Leliana looked far too amused for Eleine’s current mood. 

“So much to do,” Josephine murmured. “I cannot imagine how it is for you, Inquisitor.”

Eleine looked up at her, only now noticing she had almost drifted off. “Ah…” Eleine rubbed her eyes. “It is certainly much more activity than I am used to. The Circle had very tight schedules that did not pertain to much at all.”

Josephine’s eyes shined with that particular pity that put Eleine on edge when she was less in control of herself. “You must have grown terribly bored.”

Eleine smiled. “Once you learnt to live under constant threat and varying levels of fear— yes, I would say I grew very frustrated with toying with ice sculptures and reading dusty tomes every day.” 

“I hear you were a rather… rambunctious tenant,” Leliana piped in, eyes glittering. 

“Ah,” Eleine rubbed her eyes again. “Heard that, did you?”

“Rambunctious?” Josephine asked.

“I hear you were up to many a tryst with a different person almost every night,” Leliana lowered her voice in a conspirator’s manner, making Eleine smile. Josephine gave a gasp of interest, and leaned forward over the table.

“Is it true?” She asked.

“Well, I had to find a way _not_ to die of boredom, didn’t I?”

Heat rose in Josephine’s cheeks. Leliana let out a trilling laugh. “I also heard,” Leliana purred, “That you managed to… entice some of the Templars.” 

Eleine was startled, and more than a little confused. “I only slept with the Templars. I never engaged with a mage.”

Both Josephine and Leliana were surprised. “But—“ Josephine halted.

“Think about it,” Eleine said as she straightened up, old wounds starting to seep. “The consequences of breaking the rules and sneaking around at night would have been unavoidable. Unless, the partner in the sneaking happened to be one of the ones who _made_ the law, and within the Circle, _were_ the law.” They were all silent for a moment. “Can you picture the punishment if two mages had broken the rules and engaged one another? Connections between mages in the Circle, mine specifically, were seen as dangerous things.” 

“You did not love something or someone unless you wanted it to be used against you,” Leliana finished, a dark look starting to intrude in her usually clear gaze. Eleine hesitated, but nodded, not missing the look of pity returning to Josephine’s eyes. She was sure that was how it had been for the others. 

After… she had never had any interest in friendships or relationships. 

“Was there…” Josephine hesitated, “was there any one you ever did get attached to?”

Eleine took a few moments to breathe. All she could manage was a nod and a weak: “Once… when I was young.” 

Their silence was thick; treacle and honey, cloying the longer they stayed there. Finally, Leliana broke it with the ease of a veteran bard. 

“Surely you do have a few… entertaining stories.” Josephine perked up at this too, and Eleine allowed some of the pain to leak from her. 

Eleine turned to look at them over the war table properly. She put a leg up on the hard surface, scooting her butt in to a comfortable position. “Now that, I certainly do.”

Halfway through her third retelling of being caught with not one, but three female Templars by the head Templar, who, incidentally, had been the father of one of the girls, she and the two advisors were clutching their sides through the pain of laughing for too long and too hard. Their exhaustion fed into hysteria, and it did not matter the truth behind the story; Eleine laughed just as hard and just as long as the other two women. 

“You cannot be telling the truth,” Josephine wheezed, her accent disintegrating beneath giggles. 

“His face—“ Eleine gasped, “Seeing her topless, defiantly screaming he should let her have her fun while she was young and wasn’t it better that she couldn’t get pregnant this way?” Leliana huffed, her laughter dissolving to low breathy sounds. 

“And what then?” She asked. “What then?”

Eleine slapped her palms down on the table. “He left! Turned tail and ran! And he—“ she broke off, gasping for breath. “He gave me a nod every time he saw me afterwards!”

It took them too many minutes to count to calm down. Josephine was slumped against the table, holding herself up by one weak, shaking arm. Leliana stood with far more poise, but her usual stance of hands clasped her back was completely lost to trying to stifle light giggles with her palms. 

Eleine felt herself being lighter than she had in months. 

“And what about here?” Josephine asked when she pulled herself upright. “You are free from the watch of the Circle now.”

Eleine considered her carefully. “You mean to say I could develop a deeper attachment?” Absurd. 

Josephine retrieved her clipboard. “I think it would be lovely.” 

Leliana cocked her head. “So long as you stay away from major political players while we’re at war, I too think it would be good. We cannot afford for new interests to be brought into it, certainly not familial obligations. But you deserve some companionship.”

Eleine took a breath and gave a wave of her hand. Eyes on the night sky through the windows, she sighed. “I have no interest in nobles of any kind. But attachment is something I’ve been trained out of. It is not so easy to enter into.”

“Then perhaps not even attachment,” Josephine considered, then gave sure strokes of her quill. “I’m sure there will be someone that could interest you for a while.”

“Oh,” Leliana purred, “what about Cullen?”

Eleine felt walls rise up within her. Old and practiced. “He certainly is…”

“Warm?” broke in Josephine. Leliana laughed. 

“I was more thinking… delicious, Josie.” 

Heat rose to Josephine’s cheeks. “Well… it is impossible to disregard his body as…”

Eleine smirked. “Warm? I think I agree.” She hopped off the war table, preparing to leave. “Cullen Rutherford, capable commander of the Inquisition, is very much a _warm body_.” 

“There will be another meeting around noon, tomorrow,” Leliana reminded her, and Eleine gave her an affirmative wave. She would be there, as she was every day. Pushing through Josephine’s office to round the corner of the hall to her own door, she took a moment to appreciate that they had prepared her a space all for herself. 

She spent most of her nights working or with Sven, but escaping to the spacious bedroom for a few hours or minutes of rest had become a favourite thing of hers to do. The bath that had been tucked into a candled alcove by Cullen, was also a cause of much joy. As she picked her way over the strewn planks of wood and scaffolding up to the stairs into her bedroom, Eleine began unbuttoning her white shirt. 

She climbed the stairs into her room, eyeing the rickety bed with slight distaste. She had had a better bed in Haven, for maker’s sake. But there was only so much to go around, and a few people still slept on bedrolls. Eleine reminded herself of that even as she slipped under the tattered covers, trying her best to ignore the lumps and bumps of the aged mattress. Josephine had promised to find her a better bed as soon as possible, and Eleine had had a few suggestions on just which beds to get. 

Rationality had tempered whatever dislike she had for camping while travelling. She knew that was the reality of it all; there was no such thing as luxury on the road. But she was noble, bred and born. Even within the circle, she had known a life of material comfort. There were some things she would never shake from her origins. 

She regretted the thought the moment she had it, as her mind filled with all the lingering demons she had. Falling into sleep was not as pleasant as she had hoped, and it was a blessing when she woke. 

Eleine ripped her sweat soaked covers off, unhitching the pants she had forgotten to take off the night before and kicking them across the room. Rubbing at her face in a mixture of frustration and distress, she tried to dispel the swarming images of a young elf boy being rent in half and the heavy hands of her mother. Fire coiled in her body and she let the swell of magic in her belly snake up through her throat and fill the air with ash. 

She anchored herself on those sensations and let them chase away the taste of blood in her mouth as a ringed hand slapped her young cheek. She hurried over to the basin beside her bath, and dipped her hands into the cold water there. She splashed her face and rubbed as hard as she could. 

She waited for the water to still, breathing heavily. When it did, she was faced with a manic woman, beautiful, but tortured. She fingered the gentle curve of her nose and the full curve of her lips. Grey irises ringed in black stared back at her, beseeching. 

Eleine sighed, and clutched the edge of the basin rather than her arms. She shook her head, and blew at a few strands of hair that stuck out of her pony-tail. 

She took a few more moments to gather herself, before ambling over to her wardrobe to dress. Warm light had begun creeping into the room, and Eleine tracked the hintings of dawn on the horizon. She withdrew the same version of her clothes from the day before, except the shirt was blue and pants and boots darker. 

She had much to say about the taste the Inquisition was providing her with, but again, she would take what she could get. She just had to avoid Vivienne as much as possible. 

Eleine snorted. Easy. It was not like she did not seek to do that already. 

She trudged out of her room and through the great hall, nodding to a few of the milling nobles and ignoring their whispers. As she passed him, Varric tossed her a small loaf of bread, and smiled gratefully. She set out on her customary path to Sven, down the hall’s stairs, to the right, down more stairs and across the courtyard. Her small breakfast was gone in moments. 

As she stepped into the courtyard she paused for a moment, taking in the glorious sight of Cullen ordering soldiers and messengers around. “Send men to scout the area,” she could hear him command, “we need to know what’s out there.” He turned to an arriving messenger and listened without taking his eyes from the scattered missives on his table. “I’ll need an update on the armoury as well,” he answered the man. Eleine considered the fact that Cullen really needed a proper office soon. She would see to it immediately after visiting Sven. 

Eleine smirked as the messenger he charged did not immediately move off, but rather stood there, scratching his chest. She leaned against the arch way, hip cocked and excited for Cullen’s response. 

Cullen drew up close to the man’s face, and she could read the incredulity all over him. “Now,” he snapped, and the messenger jerked, slapping a closed fist to his chest and scuttling off. Eleine snorted and made her way down the rest of the stairs to Cullen’s side. 

Cullen looked up as she stopped before him, arms crossed and mouth titled sardonically. He gave a roll of his eyes, aware that she had seen him. Then his expression turned serious and tinged with sadness. “We set up as best we could at Haven,” he said, hand coming up to rub the back of his neck tiredly. She eyed the bags under his eyes and wondered how much sleep he was getting. Probably no more than the rest of them. “But we could never prepare for an archdemon— or whatever it was. With some warning, we might have…” his voice dwindled, and she gave him a gentle look. He knew as well as she did they could not afford the time or energy on such unachievable desires. They could not undo their mistakes. Could not save the lives they had lost. 

She sought to even out that wrinkle on his brow. “Do you ever sleep?” she snarked, and enjoyed the way he tilted his head to the left in amusement. 

“If Corypheus strikes again we may not be able to withdraw,” he said instead, and she shook her head. Cullen turned back to the multitudinous missives on his “desk” and placed his palms on the table. If that stupid messenger had not been hanging around beside her, she would have taken the Maker sent opportunity to scope out his ass. 

_Focus, Eleine_. Maker she needed more sleep. 

“I wouldn’t want to,” Cullen continued, voce soft, “we _must_ be ready.” In other words, the man was running himself ragged and calling it duty. She held her tongue, but she would work around him somehow and find a way for him to get the rest he deserved. 

“Work on Skyhold is underway,” he said, and she smiled at the redundancy of the comment. She knew well enough. “Guard rotations established,” he informed, “we should have everything on course in the next week.” He angled his head over to look at her, and she was too late to hide her smile. “We will not run from here, Inquisitor,” he vowed, turning back to shuffle some papers around. 

She steeled herself for a question she had as of yet been unable to ask. “How many were lost?” 

“Most of our people made it to Skyhold,” Cullen answered, “it could have been worse. Morale was low but…” he handed a missive off to the messenger and then looked at her. “It has improved greatly since you accepted the role of Inquisitor.” 

Nonsense, she wanted to say. What bumbling nonsense. “ _Inquisitor Trevelyan_ ,” she scorned, “I wasn’t looking for another title.” The one she had born before had been burden enough. “It sounds odd, don’t you think?” she quipped. 

“Not at all,” he returned, and she cocked a hip.

“Is that the official response?” she sniped and he chuckled. 

“I suppose it is.” Cullen stood up straight, hands going to rest on the hilt of his sword. She eyed the pommel beneath his gloved hands. Must be shiny by now from how often he stood like this. Not saying she didn’t appreciate it, of course. “But it’s the truth. We needed a leader, and you have proven yourself.” 

When? How? Eleine was running out of patience for the lack of specifics. Still… she could not deny the thrill of pleasure his statement had brought her. She rubbed her nose. “Thank you, Cullen.” He gave her a crooked smile, and she lost her train of thought momentarily. She wondered how often she could pull that expression out of him. “Our escape from Haven,” she sighed, “it was close. I am relieved that you— that so many, made it out.” She was somewhat surprised to find the emotion genuine. 

_Well_ , she snarked silently, _if they had perished after I decided to die for them, I’d have haunted their useless, dead souls._

“As am I,” Cullen agreed, voice gentle. He looked away from her, and she marvelled at the raw expression on his face. Maker, he was something else. Eleine had to vacate the area before she closed the distance, pulled that face back to hers, and took those scarred lips in her own.

Eleine turned on her heel. 

“You stayed behind—“ Cullen mumbled, and she twisted back to see him dissolved into an intensity she had not seen before. “You could have…” He moved closer to her than she had ever dared to him. She could smell him, warm, spiced, and feel the heat coming from his body. “I will not allow the events at Haven to happen again,” he vowed, “you have my word.” 

Her mouth dried up. She had often considered what it would be like to be on the receiving end of his kindness, his care. But she had never once believed he ever would turn it to her. To be so giving, so free with his compassion… he was a man most deserving. She wondered if she could ever earn more of it. 

Suddenly chasing benevolence and morality did not seem such a waste of her time. 

“Thank you, Commander,” she repeated, out of her area of experience. Cullen stepped back and his hand came up to rub the back of his head. She lingered for a few more moments, before deciding she needed to leave. 

Cullen, however, seemed to have more concerns to address. 

“A moment more of your time, Inquisitor?” he asked, and she checked her wayward body, reeling it back in to his side. 

“Yes, Cullen?” The man hesitated, and she grew curious.

“Do you… still have a phylactery?” Cullen kept his eyes on her, steady. She sighed, and shook her head. 

“No, Commander. It was destroyed in the rebellion.”

_‘Of course you’re already here,’ Harper snarked._

_Eleine shattered the vial in her hand. ‘What can I say? I was always the best of us.’_

She scrutinised his reaction. It was a practiced impression of indifference. Bloody man was terrible at disguise, but she was also terrible at reading him. 

What was someone like her supposed to understand about someone like him? 

Now, Leliana, on the other hand. She was someone Eleine comprehended perfectly. 

“Good,” Cullen said, and she raised a brow. “If it were found by the order now…” he looked away, eyes burdened. Eleine cocked a hip. 

“I would prefer not to be trackable.” Now that she was no longer an animal to be herded.

Cullen smiled. “Quite. Though I am sure you would be in no danger from whoever was sent to retrieve you.” 

Eleine tilted her head to the side, intrigued with the compliment. “My my, what have I said before about flattery, Commander?” Come to me, she encouraged, come to me. 

Cullen bumbled, putting his hands on the hilt of his sword, then rubbing the back of his head. “I— uh. I…” his eyes skittered all over the place and she rolled her eyes. Poor man was exhausted. There was no need to antagonise him further. 

“Was there anything I should know?” she asked, halting his turmoil. Cullen’s face evened out with relief, and she forced herself to remain un-insulted. 

“I’d gotten used to Mages disliking me on principle,” he commented, crossing his arms. “Vivienne’s views on Templar’s are… surprisingly traditional.” 

“I’ve never disliked you on principle,” she purred. What had she just told herself? Cullen flustered. 

“Oh, um… thank you.” 

But now she was the one uncomfortable, far more than Cullen. 

What had she been thinking? Finding a way to get him to rest, finding him a more comfortable place to work. What were these intrusive thoughts? And what had that dreadful swell in her chest and stomach been when she had confessed to never disliking him? Confessed? What?

Time for her to go. 

“Commander,” she dipped her head, and Cullen returned the gesture. She began making her escape to Sven’s room when his voice chased after her. 

“Inquisitor?” he called, and she pivoted to survey him over her shoulder. “When you are finished, it will be time for our meeting. Shall we make our way there together?” 

Eleine blinked. “Of course, Commander.” 

Slipping inside Sven’s room she placed a hand on her beating heart. She slumped against the door. 

Ridiculous. 

Sven gave a shuddering breath from his position on the bed, and Eleine hurried over to his side, all thoughts of Cullen scattering in the wind. Sven lay still now, and she checked him over, raising his arms and checking for blemishes of any kind to show poison or sabotage. She lifted his shirt off, and surveyed his chest closely. 

Air gusted into the room and she looked up to see Adan standing in the doorway. His mouth had opened in greeting, but when he caught sight of the panic on her face he shut it and shot to her side. 

“What happened?” he demanded. She shook her head, and moved out of his way. 

“He… he made a strange noise.” Adan looked at her, incredulous. 

“Maker— what sort of strange noise?”

She shook her head again and struggled for words. “He took in a rough breath and then completely stilled.”

Adan frowned, and examined Sven closer. Eleine felt her patience, her control snap. “Why is he not waking up, Adan?” Her voice whipped across the room, raw and angry. 

Adan sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Because for a moment there… he was dead, Eleine.” He looked at her, and his eyes were heavy with pity as she shook her head again. “You healed his body with all those potions… but you also flooded his system. With so much at once, it could not naturally process it—“

She clattered her way to the door, needing air, open space. Needing out. Her fault. Her fault. 

The door opened up a slice before her, before a hand materialised over her shoulder and shoved it closed. Adan breathed behind her, voice terse. “You cannot run from this; you cannot run from your son.”

She whipped back around at him, and found herself caged by his body and extended arm. “He is _not my son,_ ” she agonised. 

Adan read her for a moment, and seemed to be picking his words carefully. “What makes a son a son?”

Eleine lifted her own arm, and wacked his off the door. “Riddle me later, Adan. Work now.” 

There was a beat, but Adan withdrew from her, returning to Sven. “You may stay and hear my update, or you may leave and I will send you a missive.”

“Missive,” she cut, already squeezing back out the door. She braced herself against its closed surface for a moment, and gathered everything back up inside. _Look your best._

A glint of light pierced into her eye and she raised a hand to block it. Looking around with her free eye, she sniffed as she found Comte Larryal watching her from across the courtyard, sun glancing off his obsidian mask. She held his gaze for perhaps a moment too long, and his approach she could only curse herself for. 

“Madame,” he charmed, “it iz an honour.” He gave her an ostentatious bow, flourishing his arms in that pathetic display of Orlesian manners. 

She tilted her chin down, the extent of what she would offer him. She fought with knowledge that she had to be amicable to their allies and the knee-jerk reaction she had to despise all things noble. Comte Larryal did not seem to notice nor mind. 

“We all heard much about your excellence,” he was saying, blue eyes glinting with desire, “but zey failed to mention your beauty.” She clasped her hands behind her back lest he try to kiss them. 

“Your flatter me,” she returned, voice flat, “I am glad you have decided the Inquisition is worth your support.”

“The moment I beheld you, madame,” he ploughed onwards, “I knew I had made ze right decision.” She had had enough of his accent. She made to step around him, and looking up she met Cullen’s eyes from across the courtyard. He was watching. 

Maker. She forced herself to stay and do her duty as the Inquisitor. “Again,” she gave a much politer incline of her head, “I thank you. I hope you can turn that talented tongue of yours to enlisting more help for the Inquisition.” 

The comte took a step towards her, and she braced herself for the offer about to leave his lips. “Of course, madame. It would be my _pleasure_ —“

“Inquisitor.” Cullen stepped up beside her, and she startled. He was not looking at her though she had been the one he addressed. His eyes were sharp on the comte, and she hid a smile. 

“Why, _ser,_ ” Larryal began to object, and Eleine stamped down on whatever he had to say.

“Forgive me, your lordship, but I am required elsewhere. Shall we, Commander?” She gave the comte one last nod, and swept off, not waiting for Cullen. She did not need to. He was shadowing her steps, and she shook her head. She needed this day behind her. 

Cullen drew up beside her as they passed through the shadow of the arch, but they said nothing about the encounter. 

Making their way up the stairs, Eleine peered around Cullen to investigate the clamouring reaching her ears. A few troops trained in lines across the other half of the courtyard and Eleine paused to watch Art throw himself at a man twice his age, fervour and mania on every line of his body. Cullen paused too, and followed her gaze. 

She could hear the smile in his voice. “He took your words to heart. He is perhaps our most devoted recruit.”

She sniffed. “So he should be.” 

Cullen chuckled, shooting her a look from the corner of his eye. “Being reprimanded by the mother of your friend is certainly good incentive.” 

Eleine clutched her arms and breathed out a thin puff of ash. Her voice when she found it was small and pained. “Why does everyone consider me his mother?”

Cullen seemed to realise what he had said and whipped his head over to face her, remorse plastered across his face. “Forgive me, Inquis—“

She rounded on him. “Why, Cullen?”

He quietened and struggled for a few moments. Eventually he gave up, shaking his head. “Perhaps it is because you knew each other before— before the conclave.” He rubbed the back of his head. “You have a connection that goes deeper than… _passing acquaintances_. You care for each other…” he hesitated, “you… care for him.” She looked away from him, hiding her face as she struggled to put her mask in place. Cullen cleared his throat and angled away from her, giving her a moment of privacy. 

She wet her lips and released her hold she had on her arms. “Let’s go,” she jerked her head toward the hall. 

Cullen said nothing more, and they made it to the war room without further grievances. 

Eleine felt her control slipping, her grasp on things unspooling from her hands. She had more important things to worry over. 

But she knew the need for Sven well and happy by her side would haunt her until she made it a realisation.


	12. How Many? Many.

Eleine signed off on the missive to have Cullen’s men escort Dagna the arcanist along the Imperial Highway. She held out her hand for Josephine to hand her three other slips of paper that she signed off on regarding plans in Skyhold. One for an herb garden to be discussed, one for a mage tower, the last for an infirmary. She had been more than tempted to assign the resources to a better place for the soldiers to train, and had she not been compelled to place Sven somewhere much more comfortable, she would have.

At the behest of their new quartermaster, Ser Morris, Eleine also helped Josephine to construct requests for specialised mages to travel to Skyhold for her instruction. She rankled somewhat that her abilities were being considered insufficient, but she was not entirely against learning more than what the circle had allowed. 

Once that and other concerns regarding the supply lines were dealt with, Eleine turned to Leliana. 

“Did your men manage to construct a diagram of Skyhold?”

Leliana dipped her head, shuffling through some of the parchments on the war table to withdraw a comprehensive sketch. Eleine took it, flicking it out and straightening it open in front of her. “Cullen,” she called, and the man walked over to her. 

“Yes, inquisitor?”

“I think it is past the time to arrange an office and bedroom for you,” she informed him, scanning the abundant hollows and halls of Skyhold. She could hear the refusals rushing to his lips, and she spared him a hard glance. 

Cullen shut his mouth, and bumbled beside her awkwardly. 

“As noble and generous as I am sure whatever you were about to say was, I will not have my Commander working in a courtyard.” She looked back to the map, and tapped a spot with her finger. “Here,” she suggested, stepping back for him to have a better look. He watched her for a few moments, thinking something she had no way of knowing about, before he did as she asked. 

“Yes… I — uh. That will be more than adequate. Thank you.” Cullen fetched a quill from the copious piles on the table and marked the room with a cursive ‘C’. Eleine nodded, took the quill from him, dipped it, and marked another section of the map for some new refugees that had arrived that day. 

Eleine looked to her right to see Leliana approaching her. Eleine raised a brow at the hesitance leaking from the woman. She caught sight of a small cylinder in the Spymaster’s hand, and she straightened, bracing herself for whatever terrible news the woman was about to bring.

Maker, if her father had slaughtered anymore elves, she would march there now, mana or no, and destroy every last trace of him. 

Leliana held it out to her, and Eleine snatched it up, ready rip the little scroll open. 

“The names… of those we lost,” Leliana mourned, voice far more subdued than Eleine had ever heard it. Eleine froze, fingers gentling over the scroll. Before she could find anything to say amongst her scattered thoughts and feelings, Leliana continued. 

“You must blame _me_ for this.” Eleine wet her lips. Blame? She had never considered placing blame. 

“We all saw who attacked us,” Eleine chastised, “we know exactly who to blame.” Leliana was quiet for a few moments, and Eleine noticed that both Cullen and Josephine had settled into sorrowful silence. Leliana’s face drew down into something wretched. She shook her head. 

“I keep wondering if I could have done something different.” Leliana put her back to Eleine, and paced away to peer out one of the war room’s arced windows. “When the first of my lookouts went missing, I pulled the rest back. Awaiting more information.” Eleine listened to the Spymasters confession, opinion unchanged. “If they’d stayed in the field… they could have bought us more time.” Leliana sighed, and Eleine detested the pain cut into the woman’s voice. “I was afraid to lose my agents,” she scorned, “and instead, we lost Haven.”

Eleine considered her words carefully. They had no time for this, but she understood the necessity of it. “More likely,” Eleine contested, “they would have stayed out there, died, and we would have lost Haven anyway.”

Leliana rounded on her. “You don’t know that.” She snapped towards Eleine, and Eleine had to reel in her magic’s immediate response to the small show of aggression. Ash curled in her throat as the woman agonised further. “Their lives could have bought Haven a small chance. My people _know_ their duty; they _know_ the risks. They understand the Inquisition may call upon them to give their lives.” 

Eleine sighed, rubbing at a progressive ache in her forehead. She took a step away from Leliana. She looked back at the woman, and she hoped her expression brooked no more arguments. “Our people aren’t tools to be used and discarded. Your instincts were right. Their lives matter.” Eleine was by no means sentimental, nor emotionally attached to those in the Inquisition in the sense that she would struggle over their deaths. However, she knew that glint in Leliana’s eyes. It was the same one she had seen when Eleine had offered her sympathies for Justinia’s death. The same one she had sported when they argued over killing the turncoat. 

Leliana was struggling to find purchase on the precipice between morality and necessity. Eleine was brute enough, she did not require another ruthless creature at the helm. The Inquisition needed Leliana to be flexible. Eleine needed Leliana to be flexible. 

“Can we afford such sentimentality?” Leliana refuted, “what if Corypheus—“

“We are better than Corypheus.” Enough. She held out the scroll for Leliana to take back. Eleine had had enough. 

Leliana knew it too. The woman retrieved the list and retreated to the other side of the table, quiet, but still inwardly storming, Eleine was sure. 

The war room was mired in tension for a few moments of silence, before Josephine hedged them back into work. Another hour into discussions and plans, they were interrupted by a knock on the door. Eleine looked up from papers Josephine had shoved under her nose to compare, ideas for the uniforms and heraldry of Skyhold. Cullen had opened the door and was speaking in low, panicked tones to the messenger. He took a missive from the woman and closed the door. 

“Cullen?” Leliana asked, worry heavy on her brow. 

“There have been reports of a large concentration of Red Templars holding a Dwarven port on the Storm Coast. They have gained a substantial foothold on the region, and our soldiers have been unable to stop them from spreading.” Cullen handed the report to her, and Eleine took it, irate. She read over it, losing her calm over the number of Red Templars to have been spotted. 

“This must be dealt with immediately. We cannot allow them purchase.” Eleine slapped her hand down on the table, disrupting some stacks of paper. She held out the report for Leliana and Josephine to examine. Cullen nodded beside her, hands on the hilt of his sword.

“We have such a comprehensive report of the scale of infestation thanks to the Blades of Hessarian,” Cullen addressed her. Eleine gave a distracted nod, feeling inside her core for the extent of her mana. Weak. Insufficient. 

_Weak_. 

“We will organise a force—“

“No.” Eleine circled the war table, pushing scattered missives out of the way to view the lines and scratches that formed the words “The Storm Coast”. She fingered the strokes, and reached for a pin. She stabbed the ornate icon into the centre of the image. 

“Inquisitor,” Leliana began to argue, eyeing the ‘Inquisitor’ operation pin impaling the map. Eleine shut her down.

“They need this, Leliana.” Eleine waved a frustrated arm at the table. “They need to see me out there, as powerful as before, dealing with the demons they must face too. I cannot hole up in here forever.” 

“There is still much we have need of you for,” Josephine worried, “Comte Larryal has requested himself—“

Cullen gave an angry sound in the back of his throat. “That man is a cave lurker.” 

“Oh?” Leliana rose a brow, hands clasping behind her back. “What has he done?”

Eleine cocked a hip, waiting to see what Cullen would say. 

Cullen’s eyes flicked to her for a moment, before returning to Leliana. “He… was bothering the Inquisitor.” 

Eleine snorted. “He had the intention of propositioning me. Your timely intrusion prevented that.” She wanted to ask why he had done it, but she had a feeling she already knew. She did not flatter herself to think it was any form of possessiveness. Maker, she wished it was. 

If it was, Eleine would feel less pleasurably snarled inside. 

Cullen’s face suddenly slackened into a picture of horror. “I had assumed— that is,” he bumbled around, fighting for the words, “I— uh, I thought you did not want… I did not mean to—“

Eleine let out a huffing breath of laughter. Cullen shut his mouth. “You were correct, Commander. I have no interest in nobility.”

He looked relieved, and gave a few blushing nods. “I remembered… I remembered you saying.”

When? Eleine tried to remember an occasion where she had besmirched nobility in front of him. At further thought, Eleine was sure it had occurred at some point. 

Leliana had her head cocked, watching them. Eleine met her gaze, and stared the woman down. The Spymaster only gave her a smile. Josephine, however, seemed especially stressed by this news. 

“Inquisitor,” she fretted, “we cannot allow him to be dissatisfied with the Inquisition. I ask you avoid him to the best of your ability.” 

Eleine crossed her arms. “That was already my intention, dear ambassador.”

“And in any case,” Josephine continued her earlier rant as though there had been no interruption, “we have yet to finalise preparations for you to join Hawke in Crestwood—“

“It must wait,” Eleine stressed, “it must. Our people will soon be over run. We cannot ignore this. There is no other way.” 

The room was silent and she knew she had won. “I will prepare to leave immediately. Leliana,” she turned to the Spymaster, “send word to scout Harding. I will be there within the week. Cullen,” she looked to him next, “have a staff brought to the gates for me and Dorian, Blackwall and Sera readied. Josephine,” Eleine angled her body towards the door, “A moment of your time?”

The Antivan woman nodded, harried, and rushed to join her at the door. Eleine gave on last nod to both Cullen and Leliana, before slipping into the ruined hallway. Eleine did not speak until they were secreted away into Josephine’s office.

Eleine cut across the richly decorated chamber to the fireplace. She leaned against the mantle, watching as Josephine hurried over to join her. “Inquisitor?” the woman asked. 

Eleine cocked her hip. “Have you received any further pressure from my father?”

The woman looked startled. “No, Inquisitor. Not since your return from Redcliffe with the mages. Though,” she shot over to her desk, searching for something. “Ah— yes. Here it is.” Josephine fretted back over to her. She held out a small note. “This arrived in response to the… the hand, Inquisitor.” 

Eleine snatched it up, crumpled it and shoved it into the pocket of her pants. Josephine seemed surprised, but had learned better than to comment. Eleine gave her a nod, before turning on her heel and exiting to the great hall. A few faces turned to watch her as she picked through the hall, catching a messenger on the arm as they rushed past. 

“Inqui—“

“Find Tamoren, Adan and Solas. I want them at the gates in ten minutes.” The messenger bobbed her head in understanding, and Eleine released her, turning back to gather her things from her room. 

As she climbed her stairs, she unbuttoned her shirt, flinging it on the floor somewhere. She withdrew the paper from her pocket, before she dispatched herself of her pants and boots in a similar manner, and swayed her way to her wardrobe. 

Leaning against the smooth, lacquered surface, she flattened out the note. And there, before her very eyes, were the cursive strokes from Hagan’s hand itself. 

_No need for petulance, Eleine. You always were a troubled child. Do refrain from burning your new family’s bodies from their hands, won’t you? No matter._  
_If nothing else, Eleine, you always were an object of amusement.  
Revel in your freedom now, my daughter. _

The paper writhed and puffed into ash in her hand. There had been no spark of red, no light of a fire. A rush of heat, searing, hungry, had eaten it away in moments. She knew what he had meant to say. 

_For now._

How many years had it been? Two whole decades, since she had the _serendipity_ of hearing from him. She could scent his madness all over the parchment. Taste his corruption coiling off it like odorous winds. She pushed past the shaking in her limbs, the noise in her head. She was glad that soon she would be killing again. Asserting her power, again. 

Control, she needed to regain control. 

Eleine wrenched open her drawers, ripping her tattered armour and robes onto her body, before buckling on her pouches and shooting over to her desk. 

She stuffed a few of her documents and orders into her pouches from her desk, and paused over the Tamoren’s diary. Her fingers ghosted over the ornate but charred surface, and pushed that into her pouches as well. 

She stormed down the stairs and through the hall to the courtyard. As she neared the gate, she could see that none of her companions had arrived yet. Good.

Eleine slipped into Sven’s room. Leaning against the door, she watched his still form for a few quiet moments. Struggling with herself, Eleine padded to his side. As they always did, her fingers reached out to ghost over his prickly head. 

There was no more hair to thread her fingers through. There was no more swirling his head around and watching his face light up in joy. Eleine did not know the words she needed to say. Did not know how to say goodbye. 

“I will return,” she promised instead. 

She left the clotting room, feeling her lungs breathe easier the moment it was behind her. Solas, Adan and Tamoren waited for her by the iron wrought gate. Eleine centred herself, before swinging down to meet them. 

As she drew up beside them a messenger jogged to her side, staff in hand. She smiled at the gleaming, curved blade on the end. The crystal was not bloodstone infused, however. But she would make do with what was available. The messenger ran off.

Eleine rounded on the three men. “I will be gone for several weeks. In that time the new healer will have arrived.” Adan nodded his head, and Solas look speculative. She lowered her voice, and drew up close to them. “If they give you one reason to suspect, any indication whatsoever, that they intend foul play, you have my order to _put them down._ ”

Tamoren jerked to her right, and opened his mouth to argue. Adan, however, beat him to words.

“Understood, Inquisitor.” Eleine nodded when she saw he comprehended her meaning perfectly. Targeting her ‘son’ would be… it would be an enemy’s first choice. 

She looked to Solas now, and hesitated. 

“Inquisitor?” the elf asked, raising a brow.

“When you can, I ask you keep him company. He cannot hear you… but I would prefer he was not alone in the fade.” Eleine spat the words out, feeling them rotting on her tongue. Solas looked perplexed, but he said nothing, giving her an affirmative incline of his chin. Eleine could see Sera, Blackwall and Dorian hurrying to them. Blackwall lead four steads out of the stable, soothing them with words she could not hear. 

“Tamoren.” She turned to the hulking qunari. “I want you present in every one of Sven’s treatments, same as you Adan.” Again, Adan nodded, and again, Tamoren made to argue.

“But, El— Inquisitor,” he began, “there will be other things that—“

“I do not care,” she snapped, “do as I say.” Tamoren shut his mouth, great jaw clacking. “You are an intimidating figure – use it. I expect this new healer will be on their best behaviour with your form taking up half the room.” Something like insult flashed through Tamoren’s eyes, and Eleine could not believe the qunari was conscious of his size. 

Sera hopped to her side, giving her a shoulder barge and a quick “Hey, lady pants.” Blackwall handed her the reins to a large dusky steed, saying nothing and looking as tortured as he always did. 

Dorian sauntered into the small gathering, moustache as perfectly primped as always. He opened his mouth, no doubt to spew forth a barrage of wit and hilarity, only to be interrupted by Adan. 

“Eleine.” She looked over at Adan’s tone, and her eyes were consumed with the sight of a spinning blue vial. It arced up in the air and unbidden her arm reached out to catch it. It’s weight, the feel of it in her palm. Her core surged and wailed as she beheld the lyrium potion. 

There was such a clamouring in her head, such a need. 

Eleine hurled the vial from her, and Adan’s hand shot out and snatched it from the air. She steadied her spinning world, trying to isolate particular images and shapes. She unhitched her cravings with practiced savagery.

Eleine met his eyes, and he at least had the decency to take a step back from the look on her face. She struggled with the roaring anger in her ears, feeling it light fires along her limbs and pump in her heart. 

He had tested her, and she had failed. 

How dare he take her control from her for even a second? How dare he rip her strength from her. How dare he. 

She was in his face. He would suffer at her feet for this. 

There was a hand on her chest, and it was neither Adan’s nor her own. Eleine turned fury spitting eyes on Solas. 

“Not here,” he soothed, “not now.” She made to wrench his hand off her, but he clenched her robes harder, brittle fingers burying into the fabric. “Look around, Inquisitor. You have begun earning their trust,” he was so close to her, in her face, nose pressing against her own. He was everywhere. All she could see; all she could hear. “Do not fracture that so soon.” 

She considered rearing her head back and smashing it into his cranium. She pried his fingers from her shirt and warned him away with her eyes. He went, but he was watching, waiting, a predator stalking prey. 

She rounded on the half-cowering, half-rebellious Adan. Her view widened, and she saw the milling occupants of the courtyard whispering and fidgeting, eyes on them. 

She sucked on her teeth. “Adan.”

“You—“

“If I return to find Sven dead, or hurt, I will burn you from the inside out.”

She shoved her foot into the stirrup and threw herself up onto the steed. Eleine looked down at Adan. “He dies? I kill you slowly.” Adan whitened, but he had a sheen of resolve in his eyes. 

As she wrenched the horse around and into a trot, she heard his quietly spoken vow. “Your son will not die under my watch, Inquisitor.” 

She did not wait for her companions. She was racing out of the gates, as far away from that vial as possible. The ground was swallowed up by the stretching legs of the horse. It panted and bounced beneath her, and she tethered herself to those sensations. The clatter of hooves on stone multiplied, and she knew she had been joined by her companions. 

 

_Something terrible has happened._

Eleine rose her brow. Now this was different. After page after page of the young girl detailing her dresses and galas – and, oh, isn’t Ser Ivory just so handsome? – Eleine had given up any hope that the contents of the diary were of any interest to her. The voice no doubt belonged to a young teen, younger even than Sven. She eyed the scrawling, panicked lines that made up the usually cursive and detailed handwriting. 

_One of the boys from that awful family has gone missing. I heard Mama and Papa whispering about it after they had sent me from the dining hall. I hid in the servant’s chamber beside their seats, and— oh, it is terrible!_

_We, none of us, truly shed a tear for the eradication of that strange family, but there are suspicions that it was an internal dispute! Do you understand my meaning? It is believed— I cannot even write it; it is so dreadful. Mama is convinced that one of the other sons killed him. Wretched. These written words will haunt me. Oh, what an awful thought. Perhaps the boy is angry with me – perhaps he will haunt me._

_I do not think it was the youngest son. You remember my telling you of him? With those fine eyebrows and nose? He does not look so brute as the other._

_My father sent his condolences to the Duke and Duchess and offered his services in hunting down the perpetrator. A fine man, my father. But they sent it back!_

_Can you believe it?_

_They are a strange family. I truly hope they do not attend any of the city gala’s! They would spoil the evenings as surely as an elf may._

Dorian sat down beside her, and Eleine eyed him, hoping he would leave without her having to ask him. She wiggled down further into the blankets she had wrapped herself up in. 

No such luck. “My my,” Dorian charmed, “it iz an honour—“

Eleine jabbed Dorian in the ribs, delighting in his yip of protest. “Heard about that, did you?” Eleine objected, “and that was an atrocious Orlesian accent.”

“Not enough rolling of the ‘R’, I know,” Dorian agreed, rubbing his side, “but one can only have so many talents – even one such as I.” 

Eleine sighed, her breath puffing in steam, and tracked the cloud obscured horizon. The mountains around Skyhold were not something she had hoped to enter into again so soon. A fire cracked and popped a few metres from them, and Eleine drew strength from the flames. 

She had missed fire. 

Eleine cocked her head to the side, glaring at Dorian who had been staring at her. The man had the gall to smirk. “I assume you ventured over here to be a pest, so hurry up with it.”

Dorian mocked offended. “A pest? Why, you have never appreciated me as I deserve. Allow me ‘bane of your existence’, at the very least.”

“I’m afraid you don’t know enough of my secrets to earn that title.” The only bane of her existence was Harper and her father. Harper, because the mad woman _did_ know some of her damning secrets and would share them, and her father because he was a maker damned scourge on Thedas. 

Dorian stretched his legs out in the snow before him, languorously placing one atop the other. “Perhaps that can be remedied. I am a repository of secrets. Loosen your lips with wine sometime, and I promise to be a very good listener.”

Eleine rolled her eyes. “I do not drink, as you well know.”

“Not a drop your whole life.” Dorian swung kohl lined eyes back to her. “Now you must be protected. You are an endangered species.”

Eleine blew out a huff of steam, straining her mana to warm the biting chill around them. Dorian sniffed his appreciation. “What is it you want from me, Dorian?” 

Dorian observed his fingernails for a few moments. “I happened to see your encounter with Adan earlier today—“

“You were standing right next to me,” Eleine snarked, “of course you saw it. Spit it out, I’m running out of patience.” 

Dorian looked her in the eyes, and she knew he was devoid of any remaining jest or deflection. “How much mana do you really have? Forgive me, Inquisitor, but I wish to know if you will be a burden.” 

“I will be a burden,” she answered immediately, and Dorian’s eyebrows rose into his hairline. “Are you satisfied?”

“No,” he replied, voice flat. “Your addiction and reliance on lyrium should not be so extreme as it is.”

“No,” Eleine agreed, looking back out at the seam between the sky and mountains, “not if those were the only three lyrium potions I had taken.”

Dorian let out a ragged breath, and she watched it mist before him. “How many?”

Eleine hummed. “Many.”

“May I ask why?”

“After I closed the breach…” Eleine sighed, tilting her head up to see the stars. “I was without a drop of mana.” Dorian watched her, mouth pulled down in a frown. “I was vulnerable.” She held up her left hand, flexing the gloved fingers. “I have never been vulnerable since I was a child.” 

_‘Really, Eleine.’ Her father paced before her, bare feet visible from beneath his robe. ‘You are capable of this,’ he waved the hand, and Eleine watched the fingers flopping around, lax and demented. ‘But you cannot do something so simple as burn her hair?’_  
_Eleine curled up, tucking her head into her knees.  
‘You are a disappointment, daughter.’_

“The moment I was back within Haven… I took two, replenishing some of what I had lost.” Eleine wrenched herself from the memory, grounding herself on the warmth of Dorian beside her. “I had not expected the circumstance of needing more. There was one or two more during the battle.”

Dorian shook his head. “Then three.”

“Well,” she snarked, “I was not supposed to live with the consequences of crippling my mana to be dependent on lyrium.” 

Dorian shot her a look. “Temporarily.”

Eleine sniffed. “It’s an extended version of temporality.”

“Well,” Dorian cocked a leg, resting his forearm against it, “you have a week to regain what you can. And then, my dear Inquisitor, you shall have to stand behind me in battle.”

“Oh, Dorian,” she purred, “you are a gallant man. However can I thank you?” 

Dorian laughed. “I know I am handsome, and the temptation must be insurmountable for you, but let us keep this professional, shall we?”

Eleine laughed, deep and sultry. “Trust me, it _is_ professional.”

“My my, our Inquisitor is a siren,” Dorian boomed, “is there no one safe from her wiles?”

“Comte Larryal,” Eleine decreed, and Dorian snorted. 

“Now, now, you cannot tell me that shiny mask does not oil up your libido.” Dorian yanked on a strand of her hair.

Eleine made a disgusted face, and Dorian chuckled. “I think not.”

Dorian swept to his feet. “Then am I to be alone in your affections?”

“You always have been,” Eleine purred.

“Not when you were tumbling under the sheets with that messenger in Haven, I am sure.” 

“She was nothing,” Eleine cried, mock pleading, “since the moment I saw your moustache, you are all I have desired.”

Dorian smoothed out said moustache, crossing his arms. “I am not convinced, my dear. I shall take my leave of you now, before you tear the clothes from my body.” Dorian gave a jaunty swing, and sauntered off back towards their camp. 

“But Dorian,” she called after him, “I pine for you.”

“As do many,” Dorian cried back, “but, alas, I am but a pariah that seeks to sequester himself away from society. I simply cannot destroy that image, not even for you, Inquisitor.”

Eleine felt the amusement and tingling happiness drain from her. She huddled further into her blankets, unable to call upon the fade to create more warmth. The week would disappear from her, she knew. Faster than what she would be able to keep up with. Eleine felt her consciousness scrape at the empty cavern of her mana.

Still, she would go. 

Still, she would kill.

She had killed without mana before. 

And she was not the child of twenty years ago. Even if she were to meet her father now, she would survive. 

Eleine clutched her arms. 

One week.


	13. Lady Parts And Corruption

By the third day they broke through the alpines to softer, warmer grounds. The trees were thicker here, hedging into the Crestwood. For each drawling hour through the freezing altitudes and uneven terrain, Eleine had sequestered herself away from the group. She had little to no interest in engaging with her companions. Dorian, she perhaps did not mind, but his acerbic wit had her playing games she had less and less energy for. 

The dry well of her mana was a vivid reminder of her incapacities. Hit them first, she always vowed, hit them first and they cannot get you. She had never considered being without her flames again. Not since that time in the circle. 

And even that she had survived. 

She did not drain herself anymore with the hope that it would recover faster. She could not risk having none when on the road. 

So she tended to the miniscule flames in her belly, feeding them with as much hate and anger as she possessed. 

From a few metres to her left, she could hear Sera cackling upon her steed, no doubt having planned something as atrocious as her mind could conjure. Eleine led her own clopping steed away from the girl. She did not want to know what she would sink into her bedroll to find that night. 

If she could handle the growing smell of the horses, she would have hidden with them at night. As it was, she neither new how to look after them, nor could tolerate their general messiness. Blackwall had taken to caring for her horse without complaint. 

“Look at you all serious,” Eleine heard Sera snipe, and by Blackwall’s heavy sigh, she could guess who she was talking to. “What do wardens do when there’s no blight, anyway?” 

“Whatever it takes to keep the world safe,” the man answered, a mistake in Eleine’s opinion. No need to encourage the girl. Especially not now when they all would not mind less buzzing in their ears. 

“Like, join Inquisitions?” Sera nagged. Dorian pulled his horse up beside her and shot her a look. Eleine rolled her neck, sore and tired from riding all day. They would set up camp for the night in two or so hours, and if Sera could maintain some semblance of quiet for that long, Eleine would be beyond appreciative. 

“If that’s what’s necessary,” Blackwall shot back, “hey, you’re here too.” 

Sera gave a demented cackle. “The Inquisition can’t be all broody beards like you and Cassandra. 

“She doesn’t have the hair for it,” Blackwall teased, and Eleine had a swooping suspicion that had been a mistake, as well.

Sure enough, he had excited her. “Oh, I bet she does,” Sera chirped, “ _places_.”

Blackwall grumbled into silence, not knowing the appropriate response. Dorian though, snickered at her side. She shot him a look, but the man merely raised an eyebrow in retort. 

Sera took it upon herself to angle her horse towards Eleine, and Eleine was immediately wary. “Couple o’ days ago,” the girl began, “the kitchen wouldn’t give me cakes because Josie _oh-so-prim_ was sending them to ‘allies’.” Sera watched her expectantly, but Eleine was at a loss for words. Was this some kind of formal complaint? Did she want Eleine to have the kitchen make more cakes? Did she want Eleine to _buy_ her cakes?

Blackwall answered for her. “Ahh,” he rumbled, “why give them cake when you can give them a two-fingered salute and a box full of dog shit?” 

Sera giggled and Eleine gave somewhat of a wry smirk. 

“You know I hate the aristocracy as much as you do,” Blackwall continued, and Eleine looked over her shoulder to see his face darkening. A streak of horror flashed through his eyes. “I hate that they sit in palaces, sipping wine while people starve outside their gates. I hate that good soldiers die in senseless wars over who gets the fancy chair.” Eleine turned away from the pain in Blackwall’s eyes. “Still,” he concluded, “it’s better to have them on your side than not. They’re dogs, all of them, and even the primped and powdered ones have teeth.” Eleine swung an eye over to look at Dorian.

Sure enough, he looked a tad disgruntled. Eleine cleared her throat while Sera giggled again, caught up over the dog shit in a box fiasco. Dorian looked to her, too late in attempting to suss out her original reaction.

Eleine rose a brow, mirroring his earlier one. Dorian’s lips quirked into a small smile. 

Blackwall seemed to realise his audience too late. “Inquisitor—“

“Nah,” Sera cut him off, “she hates ‘em as much as us, doncha, Lady Parts?” 

“I am not fond,” Eleine agreed. 

“But… Milady,” Blackwall hedged, “you are one.” 

“Then you can be sure I know best all that there is to hate about a noble born individual.” Eleine looked to Dorian. “Though, there are exceptions.”

Dorian gave her a smile, small, honest. 

Sera jerked her horse back to Blackwall, swapping barbs and drivel in enthusiastic tones. Dorian stayed by her side, and for once, he too was quiet. 

“Mana?” he inquired after quite some time. 

Eleine felt at the bare cavern. “Let us hope the next four days bring with them as much mana as they do illuminating conversation.” 

 

Eleine eyed the inconspicuous bed roll. She poked at it with a wary toe, sussing out the bottom corners and edges for snakes or lizards. When nothing moved and nothing made a noise, she snatched at the top right corner of the covers, and ripped them back. 

The inside exposed, she found a copious amount of rashvine in a lattice work across her bed. Eleine sighed, forlorn that she would not be sleeping comfortably tonight. Flipping the blanket back up with her toe, she gave up on her spoiled bedroll. 

Leaving her tent, Eleine snuck around the camp fire to the side of Sera’s. She could see the elf moving inside, undressing and preparing for her sleep, no doubt. Eleine ducked down by the corner of the tent, and ripped out one of the pegs. 

Sera gave a warbling yell as the whole canvas fell atop her, and Eleine sat back on her heels to enjoy the writhing and curses. 

Dorian and Blackwall shot out of their tents, disgruntled and half undressed, looking around for the commotion. Their wild eyes landed on Eleine smirking beside Sera’s tent, and Blackwall looked distinctly unamused. Dorian, however, hooted his appreciation of the mess. 

Sera squirmed out of the collapsed tent, dishevelled, and turned wide, accusing eyes on Eleine. “You rich tit!”

“Surely you know by now, Sera,” Eleine cocked her head to the side, unmoved, “us rich tits are vindictive.”

“Your mother’s saggy bum,” Sera cursed, heaving herself fully out of the tent. Eleine swept to her feet, looking down at the crumpled form of the girl. 

“Quite,” she snarked, before leaving Sera to the misery of her own devising. Eleine stalked back to her tent, slipping between the folds, satisfied. Sera’s voice continued in a tirade of swears and nonsense, and Eleine wondered just how creative the girl could get. And she had thought Harper was bad. 

Though Harper swore out of genuine anger and spite. There was largely no correlation to be made between them. 

Eleine lay down on her bedroll, above the covers, separated from the rashvine. She was glad the elf had chosen now to enact this plan, and not while they were still in Skyhold’s mountains. Eleine would have punished the girl far worse if she had been stuck in the cool air all night. 

As it was, Eleine managed to tumble into sleep well enough. 

 

The torrent of rain swelled and ebbed, clamouring and alleviating. The world beyond a few metres was obscured in mist and cloud, the sky indiscernible to where it met ground. 

Eleine raised a hand, shielding her eyes from the downpour to squint into the haze for their camp. Water slithered down her head, slicking her hair against her scalp and trickling down her neck and back. Her shoulders were sopping, her tattered armour and robes anything but protective. 

Eleine lowered her hand, having seen nothing of use. Just rocks, some jagged, some smooth, and steep inclines littered with gouges. Dorian pulled up beside her, and she appreciated the hum of heat radiating off his body. 

The Altus frowned at her, rain making translucent tracks down his face. “Nothing?”

“Nothing.” Eleine pulled the wet clump of her ponytail off her neck and back onto the outside of her clothes. 

The man smoothed out his moustache, agitated, it seemed, by how the rain was pushing it straight down over his mouth. “Lovely.”

At least Sera had quietened with the rest of them. Eleine was not sure she could cope with anymore disparaging comments about her lineage while being pounded by rain. 

“We have to keep moving, regardless.” Eleine hailed the other two, and set off the moment they saw. Blackwall followed behind them with their mounts. 

Eleine did not know the exact direction, but she focused on her feet and the ground beneath it, scouring for any sign of tracks. 

There.

Eleine hunkered down, fingers ghosting over the deep imprint. She cocked her head to the side. 

“What is it?” Blackwall asked behind her, and she shook her head. 

There was something wrong. Something about the shape of it, the point at the toe, the—

A fleshy face lunged towards her, mouth opened wide, rotted teeth gleaming. Eleine did not have time to scream, to run, to breathe. Unbidden, her arms tore up to protect her face. In that split moment, she unbalanced, feet slipping on the sodden ground. 

The Hurlock’s teeth snapped shut in the air an inch from her cheek. 

And Eleine went careening down an unseen incline, sliding and slapping against the wet rock and mud. In a distant world, she could hear her companions shrieking, her name on their lips. But she soon lost awareness of anything but her fall, the seemingly endless weightlessness and pain. 

Agony screeched through her back, and Eleine tumbled through darkness, fighting for purchase in the ravines of unconsciousness. The sensation of drowning, water filling her gasping mouth slapped her awake. Eleine coughed and heaved, expelling whatever water had slipped down her throat and into her lungs. 

Eleine keened. 

Her whole body felt cracked, resounding with hurt. 

The pebbles beneath her felt like an army of knives, stabbing into her hypersensitive skin. Still, the rain beat upon her. Eleine scrabbled around, feeling for her staff. 

Blue and green crystal shards lay scattered around a jagged stone. Splintered wood scattered amongst it, and the gleam of the blade stuck out from between two rocks. Eleine’s outstretched fingers froze, and horror quickened through her. 

Sera’s scream sliced through the clamouring of the rain to her ears, and Eleine lunged for the blade, shoving it in her pouch with the diary. Scrambling up the gouge in the ground that she had made with her body, Eleine followed it as best she could to the beginning of the cliff. She ached her way on hands and knees, feeling fresh tears in her armour and robes. 

The rain made the slick stone insurmountable. Eleine tended to the flames in her belly. 

Indecision warred. She had enough to dry and scale the cliff. Or, she could save it for the battle that would no doubt still be ensuing atop it. 

Eleine clenched her hands around stones and ledges as best she could, and prayed to whatever god or goddess was truly out there, that she would not fall a second time. She heaved herself up, moving quickly, surely. The moment she had begun climbing, she noticed the angle was far less sheer. She could somewhat scramble up on her stomach in some places. 

Her strength was dwindling, and after the third time she lost her balance, her hand or foot slipping, she was exhausted, shaking against the wall. Clinging to the rock before her, Eleine took in ragged breaths. 

Dorian’s holler had her wriggling up again. Bit by pounding, agonising bit. Her world dissolved to rain, wet, and fear. 

Her hand scrabbled on flat— maker sent _flat_ land. 

An iron guarded foot stomped into the dirt beside her hand, and Eleine twisted her head up to see the wretched form of the darkspawn. 

The tattered and corrupt beast was facing away from her, moments away from lunging at a distracted Sera. The elf, the stupid elf, had her back to the creature. 

It moved, and Eleine snatched at the ankle. The Hurlock unbalanced, and she wrenched it towards her. That lipless face turned to her.

Eleine could not go for her blade without falling. 

Fire rushed to her mouth, unbidden and raw. She opened her mouth, ready to relinquish her hold on all that she had managed to sustain. 

The Hurlock lunged, sword sweeping for her neck. 

A blade impaled the monsters head, and Eleine sucked her magic back in. It roiled, deep, low in her belly. She could feel its twitching irritation at having been chained again. 

Hands, strong, large, circled her arms, and hauled her up over the edge. Eleine steadied herself on Blackwall’s solid form. “’Right, Milady?” she heard him calling. She gave a sharp nod, palming the blade in her pouch. 

Blackwall powered off, shield raised, hurtling for the Ghoul hounding Sera. Eleine stumbled, body giving out as her adrenaline scuttled away from her. She sagged, for once wishing for the body of her staff to lean upon. 

A Ghoul screeched its way past her, streaking towards a hazy form she recognised as Dorian. Eleine whipped out towards it, and savage met savage.

Eleine danced out of the way of the Ghouls sloppy swing, body pumping with anticipation and need. Again, the sword stroked, and Eleine caught it with her blade. The creature possessed a strength Eleine had not expected, and she strained to halt the blow. 

She had moments. Her body sung, keening for the kill. Eleine twisted, rolling in close to the Ghoul, and slammed the blade into its sunken temple. She leaped back as blood spurted from the beast, red, hot, searing. 

Breathless, she hunted through the downpour for the next monster. Shapes loomed towards her, and she lost track of the parries and ducks and jerks out of the way of hungry iron. She grappled with Ghoul after deranged Ghoul, refusing to use anything other than her blade. 

Her body titillated with the exertion, the movements it had been denied for so long. Eleine saw flashing steel, the red of circle Templars, and a blood-soaked ground. It was a phantom, she knew. A memory. 

Still, she felt the sear of terror and anger in her veins. It hastened into adrenaline that sustained her through each darkspawn confrontation. When she prowled through the rain, scenting for more to find none but her companions, Eleine felt the tether of consciousness slip from her. Blackwall caught her as her world spun, and she clung to his front, fighting to stand up straight past the heaviness of her limbs. 

Before she knew it, she was being heaved up onto her mount, the animal flighty and reeking of terror. It nickered beneath her as they made for the camp, grim, shaken. If she craned her head, she could watch its ears swivel around in anxiousness, searching for the sound of more enemies. 

 

Eleine woke to an unknown human woman hovering over her. Her blow to their throat was caught, and Eleine wrestled to unpin her hand. Thunder cracked overhead, but there was silence where the rain should be. 

“Inquisitor—” the woman yelped, mortally offended. “That is quite enough.” 

Eleine wet her lips, eyeing the healer above her. “Perhaps so.” 

The grey woman gave a disbelieving shake of her head, and Eleine was distracted by the silver strands of her hair sweeping in the air above her face. “You will not be snuck upon, at least.” 

“No daggers in my ribs,” Eleine agreed, testing the feel of her body. Unhurt, but sluggish. She had been drugged. Eleine’s mouth thinned out into a grim line. Maker, she hated medicine. 

“Your fall was fortuitous from what I am told,” the woman told her, “but you, of course, are blessed.” 

Eleine curled her lip. Blessed. By whom? The Holy Bride? 

The woman smiled at her. “I think we are lucky that you do not believe it.”

“Oh?” Eleine queried, allowing herself to be helped up into a sitting position. 

“Those that think themselves heralds…” the woman gave a sad shake of her head, “they are often…”

“Corrupt?” Eleine finished. She did not need any more help being corrupted. She already teetered between a beast and human. 

The woman nodded, feeling alongside Eleine’s ribs. “Indeed. You are perfectly fine to go, Inquisitor. There is much for you to do, I know. But I ask you leave as much of it as possible to your able-bodied companions.”

Eleine rose a brow at the gleam in the woman’s eye when she mentioned “able-bodied companions”. She would lay all her coin on betting that the woman was taken by Blackwall’s beard. 

Eleine gave the healer a grateful incline of her head, which she received in returned. Helped to her feet, Eleine steadied herself, forcing her body to do as she commanded. Slow, but sharp, she paced from the tent. They had made it to the Driftwood Margin Camp, and Eleine took a moment to appreciate the sound of crashing waves.

It did not take her long to find her companions, sat by a dead fire, arguing. The Inquisition soldiers and scouts that saw her clapped a fist to their chest and Eleine gave them stiff nods in return. 

Dorian looked up as she approached, and relief glinted in his dark eyes. He held out her pouches, which she gladly took and strapped back around her waist. 

“You should learn to watch your back,” Blackwall chided, voice harsh and grating. 

“Well _you_ need to… your arse! No, your mum’s arse,” Sera shot back, petulant and agitated. One look at Dorian and she saw that they had been going on for a while. 

Yet to notice her, Blackwall continued their squabble. “Great,” he rumbled, sarcastic, “I’m glad we understand each other.”

Eleine sniffed, and Sera’s head shot up, eyes wide on her face. “Lady Pa—“

“Hurt pride aside,” she warned Sera, “you were almost run through by a Hurlock.”

Sera gaped. “How’d you know that, then?”

“Because she saved you,” Blackwall chastised, “and almost died doing so.”

Eleine felt monumentally uncomfortable with that rehashing of events. That is _not_ what she had experienced. The approving look in Blackwall’s eyes was further off putting. 

“As much as I am eager to embark on another killing spree,” Dorian worried, “I think perhaps we should wait until you are—“

Eleine dipped her mind’s fingers into the refilling well of her mana. “We cannot wait a moment, Dorian,” she argued, “we already lost a week’s time in checking them. Soon there will be far more than we can handle.” 

Dorian gave a shake of his head, but did not press it further. 

Eleine scanned the camp, searching for the familiar body of Scout Harding. “Scout Harding?” she inquired to her companions. 

“Here earlier,” Blackwall told her, taking a quick moment to sharpen his blade. “had to go report to Leliana.”

Eleine stopped looking and turned to him. “And did she present a fair reason for her incompetence at reporting the darkspawn infestation?” 

The _scree_ of Blackwall’s grind stone dwindled away. He looked to her, wary. “Milady—“

“Tell me, Warden Blackwall, how fortuitous we were that we survived that encounter.” Blackwall looked away at the danger in her tone. 

“Very, Milady.” 

“Very,” Eleine confirmed, voice hard, “so tell me. What reasons did she present?”

“Sent it to Skyhold,” Sera piped up, “but was too late. We were already three days on the road, and ‘parrently the rout wasn’t the same.” 

“Apparently,” Eleine scorned. 

Dorian swung to his feet. “Before you come up with some diabolic plan that I am sure will devastate Scout Harding, shall we divest the region of the interlopers?”

Eleine felt the empty space between her shoulders. “Is it too much to hope that there is a mage stationed here?”

Dorian eyed her lack of a staff. “I am sure there will be some poor sod you can bully out of their possessions.”

“I was thinking much the same thing.” Eleine prowled through the camp and did just that. She returned to find Sera, Dorian and Blackwall ready. Dorian smirked at the sight of the ice staff on her back. Eleine rolled her eyes. She had to make do. 

The route to the cove was far less unpleasant as their initial trek through the Storm Coast. The sky had clearly taken mercy on her and refrained from unleashing itself upon her already sodden self. Sera seemed subdued after her lecture, and Blackwall looked somewhat weary. 

Dorian, however, hummed at her side. “We should spar sometime, Inquisitor.” Eleine shot him an unappreciative look and he corrected himself. “After…” he gestured at her with flicking wrist motions, “you sort that out.” 

Eleine rolled her eyes. “Perhaps we should. So long as you don’t get scared by a few flames.”

“You can keep ‘em away from me,” Sera shuddered in front of them. 

“I can’t believe _you’re_ scared of magic, Sera,” Dorian wondered, “it’s a gift as mundane to me as your bow to you. Surely you know there’s nothing to fear in a properly used tool?”

Eleine watched Dorian from the corner of her eye. Silly man. There was no need to require Sera’s approval. They would never win, them. Mages would always be feared. And as Eleine ran her consciousness through the yawning hunger of her own fire, she knew there was some reason behind it. 

“Tell that to all the ‘proper’ mages waving their tools in people’s faces,” Sera shot back. 

Eleine pressed her lips together to hide her smile. Dorian shook his head beside her. “There’s an image.” 

“What about Coryphamus? How many ‘proper tools’ does he have under ‘im?” 

Eleine snorted and Dorian began to lose his composure. “That’s not… I don’t think I can continue.” 

“Right. Well. I don’t care how gifted you are,” Sera went on, unawares to their snickering, “don’t cram it where it’s not wanted.” 

Blackwall burst out into laughter, and Eleine was not far behind. Sera looked between them, put out and a little confused. 

“Wot?”

“Oh, Sera,” Dorian professed, “ _you_ are the gift.” 

They continued on in a similar manner, but Eleine faded out, intent on being far more aware of their surroundings than last time. She had a feeling those were not the only darkspawn to be creeping around the area. Eleine was once again glad she had brought Blackwall along. 

The pebbles beneath their feet turned into large, far less rounded stones, and Eleine knew they must be close. Sure enough, somewhat obscured by lingering mist a hundred or so metres in front of them, was the rock outcropping that doubled as an inconspicuous entrance. As they drew up close, two scouts hailed to her. 

She nodded in answer to their “Your worship” and hurried past them.

Entering into the dank grotto first, Eleine spied some spindleweed to their left. She smirked. Stepping aside as her companions joined her, their feet slapping against the damp stone, Eleine watched as Sera loped on, unwitting. 

Ripping some out, she flung it at Sera. The girl shrieked, arms flailing to rid herself of the sticky weed. Dorian let out great booms of laughter that bounded of the low ceiling and tight walls to surround them. 

Sera published a litany of curses, each as inventive as the last, and all following along the motif of bums. Eleine swayed past her, making sure the girl saw her smirk. She had no doubt she would be paid back in double for that later. 

The tang of salt water accosted them the moment they stepped out from the dark cavern and no one but Blackwall seemed to appreciate it. The sound of waves, Eleine enjoyed. The spray, the wet and the smell? Not in the least. 

Eleine eyed two unmanned and beached boats. She motioned for her companions to be careful, and she hunkered down, unsheathing the acquisitioned staff. She found only two mangled corpses. Eleine returned to her feet, shaking her head at her companions. 

They joined her, faces as disgusted as her own with the Red Templar remains. There was a glint of something that snatched at her eye, and Eleine crouched down beside the corrupted body, eyes tracking the contorted form dispassionately. 

There, peeking out from what she was sure had originally been a pocket, was a battered iron key. Eleine extended two ginger fingers, snatching it up without making contact with the goo oozing from the creatures. 

Dorian raised a brow and she tossed it to him, snorting as he gave a disgruntled and very noble response to holding the tainted object. 

They trudged on, and Eleine took a moment to scan the corners of the yawning entrance before them. She wanted no sudden surprise spiders. Each blazing sconce they passed Eleine felt more and more irritated. She missed that ravaging burn searing its way out of her and into the world around her. She missed watching the chaos she caused swallow everything she bid it to. 

She missed the inferno that devoted itself to her whim. 

The broiling conflagration in her core was nothing like what it should be, and though she knew she had enough to cause significant hell, it was not half of what she was capable of. 

The Dwarven port was stained with the infestation of the Red Templars. Red lyrium sprouted from freight chests and walls, the cursed stuff gleaming a macabre crimson. 

They moved swiftly, and though they kept their distance from the majority of the shards, Eleine did instruct Blackwall to shatter a few of the larger growths. While they did not know how to stem their pollution, they could slow it down. 

It did not take long for them to encounter the beasts themselves, but as they were shadowed by the most detestable creation she could ever have imagined, Eleine wished it had been later rather than sooner. 

A Behemoth, for that is all it could be called, reared above them, a mass of crystals deep as wine and sharp as glass. At the centre of the monster, a tortured Templar man. 

Even Eleine pitied the monster he had been rent into. 

As it heaved up its great crystalline hand, and brought it down onto the ground before them, however, Eleine lost all such sentiments. She caught hold of Sera’s arm in time to haul the girl away from the lyrium spikes that would have impaled her. 

From there, Eleine’s world melted away to move, move, _move_. She danced and hid behind Blackwall, listening to his profound curses and exclamations. Occasionally she would slip out, loping around the side of the battle to the Templar marksmen behind the Behemoth. She got in a few quick jabs of her stave’s blade, before pelting back around to safety. Together with Sera’s proficient aim, they took down the sneaky bastards, and useless against such a large creature without her mana, Eleine took to ensuring her companions were not boxed in. 

Dorian’s lightning crackled and snapped overhead, and Eleine felt the booms and claps titillate in her core. Oh, how she wished she could allow her own flames to mingle, creating a tempest of magic. Great, swirling power. 

But this was the first wave, and Eleine tempered her baser desires with that knowledge. There would be more for her to delight upon, soon. 

Sera’s arrow pierced the exposed head of the Templar, and the beast crumpled to its knees. Blackwall wasted not a moment before hailing down upon it, sword and shield an onslaught of rage and alacrity. Dorian’s cage of lightning toppled at last, and Eleine and her companions ducked as it shattered, spraying the cavern with multitudinous shards. 

Their next confrontation rushed to them. As did the next. And the next. 

And through each one, Eleine contained herself, tending to the angry furnace in her core. She was not useless, but of far less capability than she’d suspected she could be. 

They broke through to the cove, a trail of casualty and ruthlessness behind them— Eleine less responsible for it than she would have liked. 

The tang of salt and the sea mingled alongside the stench of death as they charged, unhesitating, into the swarm of Behemoths and marksman and soldiers. Eleine felt herself being swept up into the torrent of battle, and she readied herself. 

It was time. 

Ash coiled in her throat and seeped from her nose. Her mouth reared open, her useless staff discarded. 

And out, out it rushed, hungry, desperate, untempered. The stream of flame that poured from her lips was unchallenged, insurmountable. Heat like she loved, bristling and searing, caressed her skin. 

Her companions retreated behind her, and she faced the Templars alone. They writhed and flailed, running for the waters, but she dug deeper, scraping at the bottom of her well, and her mind called to the fade. 

Her flames scorched across the ground, the air consumed with eddies of ash and wails of terror. And moments from the sea, they were gone. Devoured by her, put back to hell where they belonged. 

Eleine’s maw snapped shut, her mana stuttering, but still roiling within her veins. 

“Now _that_ is the Eleine I know,” Dorian swaggered up to her side, mouth in a crooked grin. “Unnecessary brute force. Oh, how I have missed you.”


	14. Call Me Commander

“I am sure,” Eleine lilted, shoving her foot in the stirrup of her dark steed and swinging herself up onto the saddle, “that such a gross oversight will not be repeated again.” Eleine looked down at Scout Harding. 

The woman gave three sharp nods, contrition and devotion making her eyes water. “Yes, your worship.” 

Dorian leaned over the gap between their mounts to whisper in her ear. “Now that you got all that ‘ _I could kill you_ ’ business out of the way, perhaps some encouragement?” 

Eleine sniffed, and put her heels in the horse. It nickered, and sprung into a trot. “I am otherwise impressed with your work,” she threw over her shoulder. 

Dorian snickered his way up beside her. “Is your poor soul screaming now, hm? Oh, the horror of bestowing kindness and—“

“Shut it, Vint,” she snarked, “or I will run you all till you can no longer breathe. Let alone speak.”

His mouth clacked shut, and Eleine smirked. She whispered a silent sorry to her mount, because she had not been joking. She wanted home to Sven. A coiling in her stomach told her she wouldn’t mind seeing Cullen either.

As promised, Eleine pushed them to exhaustion. Past the point where even Sera lost the energy to prattle. She stopped only for the sake of their steeds, but halved their rest times. They stopped at sundown, and rose a few hours past midnight. 

They were in the alpines within three days. 

Eleine spurred them on, and the horses seemed to lengthen their strides, desperate as their riders for that sweet sight of Skyhold. 

Traffic along the road to Skyhold, she noticed, was not only present, but booming. Carriages and wagons trundled past, some bodies opulent, draped in royale sea silk, and others in tattered cotton and plaideweave. Eleine turned her head away, tracking the snow laden mountains, after catching sight of Sera sneaking past on foot, rashvine in a gloved hand. 

She shook her head as the girl slipped back onto her mount, snickering and snorting to herself. Blackwall gave a suffering sigh. 

The moment they rounded the curve in the road that lead to the castle, and it peeked out from the cliff faces above them, their energy was renewed. Eleine soothed her shuddering horse into a smoother gait, letting it rest now. As they clopped their way to the gates, past the milling humans and elves and dwarves, a woman clutched her wrist. Eleine’s head snapped down, her free hand palming the staff blade she had kept. 

The ragged woman smiled, rotten teeth bared in reverence. A slip of parchment was shoved into her hand, and then she was gone. None of her companions had noticed, none of the other occupants of the bridge aware. 

Eleine thumbed the crunchy parchment, feeling the innumerable ridges beneath the pad of her finger. Dashes of ink across the note arced and curled, and she considered for a long time what to do with it. 

 

 _You never fucking die, do you? Fucking monster.  
Landen has need of you._

 

Eleine blew on it, tending to the fire in her belly. A spark lit on the corner, and she tempered it, chaining it to her will. Her mana strained, and she withheld another bout of anger. She sucked back in the fire, admiring her job well done. Beneath the first line there remained only a jagged edge of crescent burns and blackened parchment. 

She tucked the remaining half of the note into the diary as a bookmark. 

Dismounting outside the gates was every bit as difficult as she had thought it would be. She ached between her legs, and pain shot up her back in waves. Blackwall held his hand out for the reins of her panting steed, and she gladly left him to deal with it. 

Eleine prowled through the gates, body stiff and sore. Waiting inside the courtyard, Cullen, Josephine and Leliana cut a regal picture. Leliana gave a nod of hail, and Eleine returned it sharply.

But she veered to the left, ignoring her expecting advisors, and stalked up Sven’s stairs. “Inquisi—” Eleine pretended she didn’t hear Josephine’s call, and pushed open the door. 

Eleine paused, foot hanging frozen over the threshold. 

A petit elf hovered over Sven’s still body, large, owlish eyes overhung by thick, dark eyebrows. He moved to open his mouth, and Eleine stepped into the clean room, closing the door behind her. She watched as his eyes flicked to the blocked escape then to the ground, and she wondered at the threat he believed her to be. 

“I was unaware Abel Dubois was an elf.” Eleine leaned against the wood door, eyeing the skittish man. 

“Raised by an Orlesian family, Madame.” The elf wrung his hands, taking a step away from Sven. She noted his weaker accent.

“Is that so.” She cocked her head. “Where is Adan and Tamoren?”

Abel fidgeted. “Forgive me, Madame. I asked if perhaps zey could… vacate while I worked.” 

“And they accepted this, did they?” She strolled towards him, keeping her pace slow, but sharp. He seemed to crumple in on himself. 

“Non,” he replied, “zey did not. So I do my proper treatments when zey are not here.”

“Proper treatments,” she echoed, voice dangerous. She loomed over him, tracking the drawing of his shoulders, the creases on his forehead. 

“Yes, Madame. It iz not well recognised.” She cast a shadow over him and watched as he shuddered. “Stimulus Therapy, Madame.”

She placed herself between him and Sven. “Oh?” 

“He… Madame, forgive me. I am… I am sorry.” Abel pulled on one of his ears, tucking stray straw hair behind it. Still, he could not meet her eyes. “But your—“ she raised her eyebrows and he tripped over his words. “Ze boy iz… he may never wake up.” 

She cursed the liquidation of her legs. She rallied herself, berating the pounding of horror in her heart. Regardless, she lowered herself onto the side of Sven’s bed. A candle flickered beside them, and Eleine watched the pulsing flame for a few moments. Sven breathed, shallow, ragged, behind her. She noticed her own breath had ceased, and forced herself to inhale past the agony in her throat. 

“What is this therapy?” Her voice was weak, thin. Pathetic. 

“It iz never truly successful, Madame. But with no options left… I try to provide ze patient with stimulus zat zey recognise, to call zem to return to us. Already,” Abel enthused, motioning to Sven and joining her by his side, “you see here?”

Eleine eyed his closeness for a few moments, before turning around to what he was pointing at. The dip of Sven’s throat and the tight skin that stretched across his chest. “You see?” Abel asked, triumphant. She rose a brow, and he stumbled on. “Zere! Zere iz improvement. Before he was grey,” he flicked his wrists up and down his body, “he looked on ze brink of death— but now, now he may…” 

His face crumpled. “I know it iz not much. I know he will not make it. But I… Madame I ask zat you let me try. And without ze big man in here, please? He iz… He iz a bit—“ he made gestures with his hands above his head, and she got his meaning. 

She looked to Sven, and felt a familiar sharpness in her chest. So in the end, she was to lose him. Her scarred hands, a tattered canvas of raised pearl marks, stroked along his stubbled head. 

Her voice fell too quiet for Abel to hear. Too weak, too jagged to be understood. “You deserved a much better mother.” 

She stood, and turned to Abel. “You may. Do what you can.” She breezed past him, hand on the door handle in moments. “Sven is your priority.” 

“Yes, Madame. Zank you, Madame.”

Eleine wrenched the door open, coming nose to nose with Art. The boy dropped his reaching hand, eyes wide on her face. 

“’Quisitor…” She watched his face go from confused to terrified. “Sven?” he demanded. She swallowed. Art shook his head, eyes hardening. “Yeh lyin’.” 

Eleine stepped aside for him. He watched her face for a few more moments, before bowling past her. She heard the healer begin to complain and tell him he needed to leave. 

Before she closed the door, Eleine caught his gaze, and stared him down. “Never,” she warned, “tell either myself, or this boy, that we must leave.”

Abel swallowed, face whitening, once again reminded, it seemed, of who she was. “Yes, Madame.”

The slide and snap of the door shutting weighed heavy on her chest. She clenched her shaking fist. 

“Madame—“ She slammed her open palm onto the wood. Pivoting, she found a surprised Comte Larryal gawking at her. “Forgive me—“

“I am needed elsewhere, your lordship. Excuse me.” Eleine stormed past him to her ambling advisors. Josephine looked stricken at the encounter, and Cullen glared at the man. “Careful, Commander,” she sniped, as she drew up beside them, “soon it’ll be you being lectured by our dear ambassador on not upsetting our noble allies.” She tried to grapple with the uneven pound of her heart. The heat in her cheeks and the stinging in her eyes. 

Cullen cocked his mouth into a humourless smirk. “We receive equal amounts of them already, I believe.”

Josephine, to her credit, merely sniffed at the interaction. 

“Sven?” Leliana asked, and Eleine clenched her arms. The hand around her throat squeezed the fingers tighter. 

She could not trust herself to speak, lest her voice betray the emotions seizing her. It seemed, however, her silence told far more than words ever could have. 

“Forgive me, Inquisitor,” Josephine lamented. Eleine turned her eyes away from the emotion in the Antivan’s. It was too much, all too much, pressing in on her. Asking things of her. Snatching at her, tearing off pieces she had protected for so long. 

Maker, Eleine was worn. 

She did not need words from the shifting Commander to know the sentiment was shared by him. His nervous energy spilled out into the air, as it always did. But his concern and sorrow for her calmed her in some ways where Josephine’s did not. She wondered if the woman new loss. 

But one only had to take a look in Cullen’s eyes to know he did. 

Leliana’s harsh words worked to both collect Eleine and anger her. “While I know Sven is important to you, we cannot allow this to distract—” 

“Oh, do not concern yourself, Leliana,” Eleine snapped, “I will always be here to throw myself into danger for you.” 

“There is more to your role and you know that, Inquisitor,” Leliana ploughed on, heedless of Cullen’s and Josephine’s complaints. 

Her control stretched, and snapped. “I promise the death of my son will not affect my ability to lead this Inquisition, Left Hand of the Divine.” With the words out, she wished she could suck them back in. _Son_ bounded around her head, taunting her. 

He was not her son. 

She was not a mother worth having. 

Not a woman worth knowing. 

Not a life worth living in the place of so many others. 

Leliana swallowed whatever she had intended to accost Eleine with. Instead, the woman clasped her hands behind her back and lowered her head in contrition. 

“Now, shall we take this to the war room?” She turned to the awkward Cullen. 

“Yes,” Josephine hurried, organising some papers on her board, “at once, if we may, Inquisitor?”

Eleine gave a weary flick of her wrist. “It is of no consequence to me.” 

And so they spent the next several hours in heavy debate. They disagreed over this, and they argued over that. They planned and organised her engagement with the warden and Hawke in Crestwood. Eleine was filled in on the things she had missed, the openings of new rooms, the clearing away of debris and the aesthetic improvements. Solas, she heard, had gotten himself a very spacious area. 

Eleine felt her self-control chip away through each second. 

At last they brought the meeting to an end, and though none of them verbalised it, all but Cullen knew it was due to the deep gouges of stress across his brow. Eleine watched him rush from the room, harried, burdened with something as he always was. 

Now that she had a moment to realise it, she saw the state he had been brought to in her absence. He was a veritable mess. Even his hair was far curlier than it usually was. As much a sign of his deterioration as his skittering eyes. 

“Tomorrow, Inquisitor,” Josephine entreated, “I ask that you find the time to consult with some of the specialists we have brought in.” 

Eleine cocked her hip. “Of course, Ambassador. Is that all?”

“Yes, Inquisitor. Thank you for the good work in the Storm Coast. I hope you receive the rest you need tonight.”

Eleine made her way to the door, ignoring Leliana as surely as the woman was ignoring her. 

“Oh.” Eleine paused, and turned back to them for a moment. “Have more cake prepared for Sera.” Josephine opened her mouth, then seemed to not have any words to say, and closed it again. Eleine left, hunting out of Josephine’s office to the throne room. Maker, she needed a bath to drown her thrumming confusion and pain. 

Regardless of the stares and dying conversation upon her entrance to the densely populated room, Eleine turned in to her own rooms. The silence, the emptiness that accosted her the moment that door closed behind her, was such a startling relief, Eleine felt it prickle in tears behind her eyes. 

She forced herself up her remaining stairs and into her rooms. Moonlight cut into the room, the pale light casting more shadows than it illuminated. She rallied the stutterings of her mana, mind hollering to the fade for some ice. 

But it was slapped from her, hurled away by shock, as she beheld her bath, steaming and full, before her. There was only one of her advisors that would have considered to have this pulled up for her. 

Eleine stamped down on the wetness of her eyes, and pulled off her pathetic excuse for armour and robes. Naked, bare at last, she gripped the edge of her tub. Three deep breaths, and she heaved herself in. Submerged beneath the water, she fought with emotions she didn’t know how to process. She was losing Sven.

No. She had lost Sven. 

Maker, she needed a distraction. 

 

Eleine rolled her shoulders, feeling clean for the first time in weeks in her finely pressed suit Josephine had prepared for her. She would not admit it out loud, but she appreciated the superior stitching of the dark uniform. 

At last she had come to her final business of the day, and as her eyes took in the sight of the mountains around Skyhold, she saw that the sun had already begin sinking. 

Grass crunched beneath her booted feet, and Eleine sidestepped the puddles that littered the courtyard. Her eyes dressed down the scaffolding still remaining, calculating how many quarries and logging stands she would need to locate to finish the work. She had been incensed last night to learn that they had not even begun work on the infirmary, and a sharp argument with Leliana revealed they had prioritised the mage tower. 

A mistake they would never be making again, they had assured her. 

There by the gates, Eleine found the true entity of her search. 

Thin, small, an elven woman stood proud amongst milling Templars. Eleine had only to take a glance at her to know her small stature meant little about what she was capable of. It was in the way her shoulders were thrown back, her feet spread. And the glint in her eyes, sharp, practiced, knowing. 

The woman was dangerous. Eleine felt the stretchings of a grin across her face. Oh, she loved that flavour of threat. 

Not a word did she manage to say, not an ounce of her usual intimidation was she able to use, before the mage shut her down. 

“Hold and declare, Inquisitor.”

Eleine stumbled over herself. “Excuse me?”

“I ask your intent,” the elf answered, irritation plain in her voice, “I was summoned to oversee training, and I would know my charge.” The woman cocked her head, sizing Eleine up. “I am your commander in this matter. Commander Helaine.” 

Eleine rankled. She had no commander. She was beyond that, now. Above that. Eleine clenched her arms. “Thank you for coming, _commander_ ,” she scorned. 

Helaine scented her disparagement and her lip curled. “I teach the way of the Knight-Commander,” she snarled, “and understanding its hierarchy is the first step.”

Eleine sniffed. “Is that so?” 

“You believe yourself above the guidance and control of others?” Helaine disdained, stance sharpening to something far less friendly than she had already been. 

“I bow to no one but myself,” Eleine snapped. Not anymore. She would never again be told to call another master. 

Helaine’s face darkened. “Perhaps I must show you the difference between us.” 

Eleine’s violence rose in answer to the woman’s. She felt the crackle and snarl of her fire agitate into life. 

Eleine cocked her hip and crossed her arms. “You’ll find that difficult, I assure you.”

“Oh, I have heard of you,” Helaine assured, “beast of Ostwick, lover of fire. And yet, you are nothing compared to me as you are now.”

Her magic reared up within her, what had been a twitching irritation flared into rage. “You will find yourself wrong,” Eleine warned, voice low, soft. 

Helaine’s arm raised, strong, stiff, pointing to a secluded area of the training ground. “Then show me, Inquisitor. Show me the woman that will not bow. Show me the strength that knows no master. Show me the will that will not bend. Show me the beast without command.” 

“You will teach me,” Eleine drawled, “but it will not be from above.”

Helaine cocked her head, and strode to the dirt ring some recruits had organised. Eleine strolled around the edge, eyeing the small area they had. Helaine raised an eyebrow at Eleine’s inspections. 

“Tell me, Inquisitor. Without your magic, what are you?” 

Her fire coiled. She knew what this was now. “I am the same.” Eleine unbuttoned her fine clothes, stepping out of them. Clad now in her undershirt and shorts, she felt free yet exposed. 

“Are you?” Helaine circled her, sure feet leaving tracks in the dirt. “you are as powerful, as volatile, as unchallenged as Eleine Trevelyan, mage of death and fury?” 

Eleine did not take her eyes off the woman’s primed body for a moment. “Interesting titles you’ve been spewing. Are they of your own untalented concoction, or are they delivered to me through the mouth of another?”

“Mine, Inquisitor, for I see what you are. And what you are not.” Helaine stopped, and Eleine mirrored her aggressive stance. Eleine recognised the woman had chosen a secluded place. There were no witnesses, no eyes, no mouths to transfer what they saw. 

Helaine’s foot drew back, and Eleine’s fire singed below her skin. “Show me what you are, Eleine.” 

Helaine moved, fast, strong. Eleine’s mind hollered to the fade, demanding what she always did. Her low mana whipped within her, and her mouth opened, fire tingling in the back of her throat. 

A foot, booted, slammed into her shoulder. Eleine unbalanced, but wrenched herself away from a second blow to her stomach. Air streamed past her, and eddies of dirt raised with each of Helaine’s sweeping movements. 

A blade, coruscating and pale, arced for her neck, and Eleine felt her fire compact around her, a simmering barrier. Her hand shot out, mind detaching from her body, and clasped Helaine’s overextended forearm. She wrenched the woman forward, fire on her tongue, about to blast the woman’s head off. 

That arm arced up. 

And she was slapped down. 

Head ricocheting off the ground, Eleine reeled. The world was a circus of colours, indefinable shapes and bitter, tanging failure in her mouth. 

Eleine spat out a clump of dirt in her mouth, body searing with anger. She heaved herself to her feet, regardless that she was still unable to see past the vortex of images and hues. Heat crackled over her skin, and she lunged in the direction of Commander Helaine. 

Her head cracked against the earth. Vision blackened, Eleine clutched at the tail of consciousness before it slipped away from her. Her cheek and temple stung and pounded, and Eleine let out a half whimper half wail. Anger and frustration clawed at her. 

She scrabbled to sit up, and found herself being pressed down by a booted foot. 

Words were spat at her, but she could not catch them. 

_‘Useless, my daughter. Useless.’ Those bare feet stalked towards her, and Eleine crawled away. A foot slammed into her ribs, and she wailed, hands fending off another blow. Bony, hard, the foot pressed down on her head._

_‘One more time, Eleine. Burn it.’_

Eleine’s hands scrambled around her, searching for the scratch of a rock beneath her gloves. Her mouth stretched into a malicious grin. Her left hand clasped the woman’s leg, and her right impaled her knee with the sharp stone. 

Helaine crumpled above her, and Eleine felt the sweep of a blade skim past the skin of her throat. Helaine had been close, so close. 

Eleine breathed in, and heaved it out, letting her magic torrent from her at last. She blew and blew, felt the sear and roar of her fire like a keen of triumph in her veins. 

And she was empty, and Helaine vanished beneath her flames. 

Ash chocked the air, great plumes obscuring anything more than two feet in front of her. Eleine wiped the dirt and muck from her face. 

The air cleared, and Eleine felt her breath empty from her lungs. Helaine stood behind a barrier of her own, arms crossed. Eleine tracked the spill of blood down the woman’s leg. The fight was over, but won by neither of them. 

Eleine brushed herself off as Helaine watched her. 

“You have so much potential,” the woman eventually chewed out, “but you squander it on suspicion and fear. You have only to relent, to allow another the reins, and you could be what you are meant to be.”

Eleine cocked her hip, chest heaving. “I am what I am meant to be.”

“You came to me first,” Helaine persisted, “you know I am what you need. This is what you need.”

“You stood out,” Eleine lilted, eyes tracing the curve of the mages armour, the padding and buckles. Wiping the sweat off from above her lip, Eleine panted. “Nothing more. I only had to take a look at the softness of the rift mage and the deranged gleam in the necromancer to know neither of them would suffice.”

“I will teach you,” Helaine insisted, “but I will tolerate nothing but your complete obedience.” 

Eleine spat. “I obey myself.”

“One day, you will. But for now, you are weak. You will obey me.” 

“Or I won’t,” Eleine returned, “and you will teach me anyway.” 

“No child,” Helaine dictated, “I won’t.” The woman had stopped panting now, and her composure was slipping back into place. “You must know what it is to follow, before you may lead.” 

Eleine rolled her shoulders. “I know what it is to be beneath someone.”

“Do you?” Helaine bent over, and snatched up the bloodied rock. Her eyes flicked from it to Eleine’s. “Because it seems to me that you have never allowed yourself to be.”

Eleine cocked a hip and rose a brow. “I lived within the circle for twenty years.” 

“And you were a complaint tenant?” Helaine let the rock fall to the ground. Eleine watched the indent it made in the dirt. 

She wondered what the woman had seen in her and how. “Perhaps less so than others.”

Helaine hummed. “Call me commander.” 

“No.” Eleine crossed her arms. 

“Call me commander, and you will never know the underside of a foot again.”

Eleine sucked on her teeth, feeling bile swirl on her tongue. “Why do you still wish to teach me despite the fact that I will not bow?”

“Because it is not pride that drives you from my authority.” Helaine stepped over the rock, and came to stand before her. “Place your trust in me, as you do not others, and I will show you what it is to stand beside your comrades, spectral blade in hand. Their equal, yet their superior. You will command their ranks. You will rise to the place you were always meant to inhabit.” 

Eleine felt her stomach tear itself to pieces. Never, would she have believed herself in a position where she would have to willingly give up her control. In the end, she knew it came down to what she wanted most. She wanted power, wanted strength. She wanted what the woman before her had. 

Could she relinquish the remaining of her own power for that? 

“Call me commander.” Helaine stood proud before her. 

“Commander.” Eleine felt her will shake, her whole being revolt. The word, that one wretched word. 

Helaine seemed to glow. “I will show you the way, Inquisitor. I will show you what it is to be truly be in charge of your fate.”

Eleine was already leaving, hands snatching out to pick up her clothes, wrenching them onto her body. Her fingers sped through the knots and ties, and smoothed down creases. Her hair was ripped out of its ties, and sectioned off into braids. Helaine did not follow her. Did not call for her. 

Eleine was tumbling, falling from a precipice she had not realised she had been pushed to. She was without cognisance of her wandering body. It was reeling in somewhere, being drawn, needing, desperately needing. 

Stone stairs appeared beneath her feet, and she followed the holler of her consciousness. She was striding across the ramparts, hunting for that room she had watched being inscribed with a bold C. 

“Spiralling, spiralling.” Eleine snapped around, taking a step back from the bony creature that had sprung up behind her. “It’s spinning away. How can I get it back? Hollow, hungry, it yearns. But you do not understand it. I can help you— I can show you.” 

Eleine tracked the form of Cole dispassionately. “I do not need help.”

“Calling but no one answers. Alone is safe, alone you can see it all. You can cut the pain away. They grab at you.” Eleine shuddered at the wiggling of something in her head. She was trapped, trapped by his voice, by his words. They clenched at her heart, ensnared it. Bony, brittle fingers dug in deeper. “They want from you, so many so many, pressing in. It is too late. You are no longer alone. You cannot go back— I can show you. I can h—“

Eleine had him by the shoulders, her mind reeling. “Get. Away. _From me._ ” 

And he was gone, puffing out from existence, away from her sight, out of her mind. The emptiness that accosted her, so sharp, so stark, had her stumbling, misty eyed, to Cullen’s office. 

He looked up at her from his desk, startled and distracted. She heard his chair scrape back as he stood, and she was before him without the sense to clean herself up first. 

“Inquis—“

“Busy, again, I see,” she heard herself say, “but perhaps I could have a moment of your time?” 

With a capability only he possessed, he shoved her from her fog of want and need. 

There it was again. The way he tilted his head from her. Hiding his eyes. Looking away from her. Rejecting her. She felt sore, bruised. Red and raw all over. 

How ridiculous. She had lead herself here because she had known he would turn from her. Known he would remind her that she was alone and unwanted. 

It hurt. She hurt. All over, everywhere. Inside and out, she bled. Her arms came up to rub her arms, spasmodically clutching them, feeling as though she needed to keep her insides from spilling out everywhere. 

She wanted to laugh. It wrenched at her throat. How stupid had she become? How wretched, to be pining after a man who despised her? 

_When you feel your worst,_ Anabelle had said, a tiny hand clutching her own, _look your best_. Eleine moved her arms down to her hips. _They can’t get you then._

She flicked her hair over her shoulder, drawing Cullen’s attention. She jerked her feelings back inside, inside, inside, where he couldn’t see them. Where the pain didn’t leak from her eyes. Didn’t tremble her lips, didn’t chill her arms. His amber eyes melted warmth onto her skin, but she spat at them now. She hated them. One breath. And she could leave here forever. A few words, and she’d cut him to the wick. 

“I’ve taken up too much of your time, forgive me,” Eleine stepped back, away, “Commander.” She turned now, rolling her hips. He gave her no words, nothing, to fill that hungry void in her. She tucked her trembling hands under her arms, and strode from him. She wouldn’t look back. She’d never look back at this man. The finest man of all. The most deserving man. Eleine could see now, as clearly as he must have all these months, she did not deserve him. 

“Inquisitor,” he called after her, something colouring his voice. She didn’t look back. She was an open flame now. Intent only on that delicious self-destruction that left you sore and keening the day after, but sick and full to bursting with satiation during. 

Blind steps led her to his door and out into the cool air. Each sway of her hips a familiar hug to her heart, each coy flip of her hair a reminder of who she was. And if she could feel a great part of her left in that office? Well, what did that matter now? 

She was through Solas’ rotunda in moments, his “Inquisitor?” falling on deaf ears. Her body burned now. The throne room opened up before her, a wide sea of faces she could fall into. Her eyes hunted that familiar obsidian Orlesian mask and beckoned when they caught blue depths. She had only to weave through the faithful, knowing behind her trailed a warm body. Her hand was on her door, pushing through, her body ready, her mind dipping into obscurity. He closed the door behind him, his hands on her waist, groping and dragging in an instant. She whipped herself against him, pinning him to the door, wrenching his mask from that face. Then his lips were on hers, swallowing up the waves of pain crashing through her body. Her hand slipped between the folds of his fine vest and sliced down, ripping each button off. Each ping on the floor took a little more of those golden eyes from her mind. A little more of that word from her. A little more of that withering, bald head from her. 

She drowned out his protests with another kiss, rolling her hips up against him. His gloved hands clamped around her ass, and she gave a growl of approval. She was impatient, and the stairs to her room too far. She began tugging at his pants, a physical demand he give her what she wanted, and _now_. But the useless man started drawing back. A few words escaped his lips before she could stop them with her own. 

Frustration began mounting in her once more, setting her blood on fire. Finally, he turned his head from her, and it was with a noise of strangled anger that she twisted away. Comte Larryal panted, eyes wide on her face, fine vest in tatters. He seemed stunned, his glistening lips moving in attempts of words. 

“Madame,” he said at last, “I must say—“

“Nothing,” she snapped, “Absolutely nothing. To no one.” She whipped around, making to storm up to room. His lack of invitation clear to the both of them. A hand clamped around her wrist before she could go too far.

“But what am I to do?” he asked, looking down at his torn vest, “I simply _cannot_ go out like this.” 

Eleine tugged her hand free, and gave an irritated flick of her wrist. Her magic snagged the lost buttons, and slipped them back into place on his clothes. Then she was gone, flying up her stairs. She slammed her door behind her, her body cold and hyper-sensitive. Her clothes stung against her skin, and no amount of ferocious ripping could get the darned things off. She fought against them all the way up the last stairs and halfway into her room. Finally, she slumped to the ground before her bed, naked. Hot tears burned down her frozen cheeks. 

She had reached the end of her strength. No longer, could she withstand the loss of Sven. No longer could she withstand being needed as something other than what she was. No longer could she unsee those kind eyes. Amber and care. A goodness she craved that would always be denied to her. 

Her cries rang un-muffled, her scratching hands roved her body un-tempered. She let her throat ache and her eyes bleed. 

The night dragged on, but she knew there would soon be a morning, and her will or not, she belonged to the Inquisition. 

 

Her fingers snapped through the motions, tying her robes knots with practiced precision. From there they moved to bind her hair up. Then they dipped into a basin of water and massaged away the night from her face. She waited until the water stilled to see her face. Two severe lines cleaved down from the bridge of her nose to around her eyes. Her lips were swollen and red, her nose a pink, raw thing. The tale of her breakdown stared back at her.

 _Look your best_. Her fingers dabbed into fine cosmetics, painting instead a story of indifference and normality. Sure swipes and twists, and she was Eleine Trevelyan, Inquisitor of the Inquisition, once again. Even breaths and controlled movements, and the night leaked away from her. When the still waters showed her a beautiful woman, strong and capable, Eleine moved away. And if her eyes showed something otherwise? Give her a few days. 

She curled her fingers around her new staff, feeling the thrum of magic there. 

Today she left for Crestwood. 

Tomorrow she killed her enemies. 

And after that? 

She would find a way to lead the Inquisition as Eleine Trevelyan. 

Her, but more.


	15. Preserve Me, Maker.

Eleine wrenched the stirrups tighter on the steed, shortening it for her height. Giving it an idle stroke, her keen eyes surveyed the empty pre-dawn courtyard. 

“Going for the tattered, undead look, I see.” Eleine turned to watch Dorian’s swaggering approach, and cocked an unamused head. His mouth was thinned in mortal insult over her attire. “How is it your capable advisors have not equipped you with something… a little less—“ his hands flourished up and down her body, gesturing to all of her. 

Eleine’s own eyes flicked down to her ripped and shredded armour and robes. She clasped her staff onto her back. “Shut up and mount.” 

“I do so love these chats with you,” Dorian snarked, and swayed away to his own tawny horse. 

Eleine heaved herself up onto the horse, hand on her staff to keep it out of the way. Once she was comfortable, she raised an impatient brow at her milling companions. Solas loped up onto the back of his hart, looking ethereal with the dawn’s light haloing around his body. Bull lumbered his way atop his own hulking mount, and together they painted a truly terrifying picture. 

Eleine snorted humourlessly. And they called _her_ the beast. 

Without waiting for the drawling Dorian, she kicked her horse into a trot, and took off out of the gates and onto the deserted bridge. She heard his proficient complaints behind her, and could care less. 

Cool air streamed around her, and Eleine relished in the sting against her skin. Each bite centred her. Took that supine form from her mind. She heard the clop of her companions behind her, and only looked back at the clambering intrusion of a fifth mount. 

Commander Helaine sat proud upon a red hart, uninvited and unsanctioned. Eleine jerked her horse to a stop right in front of the woman, anger a terrible thing in her veins. Commander Helaine, to her credit, merely raised an unfazed brow, and halted her hart with a gentle pat to its shoulder. 

“I am known for having holes in my memory,” Eleine jawed, “but I am absolutely certain you were not extended a request to accompany us.” 

“Indeed not,” Helaine replied, and Eleine’s companions pulled to a stop, looking back and forth between them. “And yet, Inquisitor, it is no longer your decision whether I choose to accompany you or not. Is it?”

Eleine restrained herself from spitting out the bile that swirled on her tongue. 

“Is this another charming southern misconception of leadership,” Dorian quipped, “or is there something I have not yet been informed about?”

Eleine looked away, fighting with herself. Her mind sped over a hundred possibilities to get rid of the woman. She eyed the edge of the bridge, wondering if she could kick Helaine all the way off it. 

Seeming to know where her mind was going, Commander Helaine interrupted before any of her plans could be put into action. “How long do you intend to remain weak?” the woman reprimanded, “can you truly afford to waste the time it will take to finish this mission?” 

Eleine sucked on her teeth. “I will train when I return.”

“No.” Helaine drew herself up, “you will train when I tell you to.”

From her periphery, she could see her companions unsettle. Solas rose a regal brow. Eleine’s magic twitched in irritation. “I will—“

“Is a few hours all you are capable of, Eleine, before your word means nothing?” 

Eleine reeled back in the hand that had swept for her staff. It fell, useless, against her knee. Helaine angled her body back towards Skyhold, the words ‘ _is the deal off?_ ’ plain across her body. 

“No,” Eleine yapped, yanking on her reins and guiding her horse back around. 

“’No’, what?”

Eleine could not believe her gall. But she did have no doubt that the woman would be as ruthless as Eleine was herself. If she did not cooperate… there was no force in the world that would bring Helaine to teach her. 

“No, Commander,” Eleine spat out, feeling raw, violated. 

“Carry on.”

“Just what is—“

Eleine kicked her heels into her horse, and together they sprung forward. She wished for as much distance between her and her companions as possible. Her steed lurched and bounced, its hooves pounding in an uneven rhythm. 

As the stone beneath her cut off into dirt and snow, Eleine heard the storm of her companions behind her, and leaned over her horse, speeding it on. Maker, she was not ready for what the next weeks would entail. Four days to Crestwood. _Preserve me._

 

Eleine huddled against the tree, a few metres away from camp. Her fingers toyed with the rough fabric of her robe, and she tracked the faded swirling design on the cuffs. Her hand dropped, still, to her lap. Looking up, she tried to rid herself of the feeling of being under water. Unable to take a breath. Unable to see past the consuming blue. 

She felt like she was bashing her head against a wall, begging for an outcome that did not exist. 

Was she a coward, for not letting Sven go? Should she have… 

Maker, she was not even strong enough to finish that thought.

So this is what she had come to?

Eleine pulled off the glove of her right hand, and brought it up before her eyes. 

Her, weak? How many lives had she taken with these very hands? For the first time in her life, she began to count. 

But their faces blurred, their existences fading from her. They hadn’t mattered then. Some had been terrors she had banished, but others, so many others, had meant nothing to her. 

_‘I know Eleine is very strong because when we got to the gate of the circle, all these people tried to attack us. And she made us leave, but I could still see her. She was in the middle of them. Alone,’ he blurted, ‘but she was winning.’_

Her vision swirled. Her hand bled red. A single bead blossomed at the tip of her index finger and fountained down, streaming across her hand. Down, it arced, pooling in her palm to hail off, staining the snow. How many had she killed then? As they swarmed for her, crazed, degraded into beasts of anger and pain.

Templars lunged, indiscriminate, _abomination_ on their lips. And Mages clawed, _traitor_ , on theirs. Her, traitor? 

_‘When, exactly,’ Eleine bared her staff, ‘was I ever one of you?’_

_They came, then. A great flood. Bodies everywhere. Steel and lightning and ice and fire. And she knew nothing but the pleasure of the kill. Nothing but the pump of blood in her veins, and the spill of it before her._

_She was fury. She was hate. She was violence and death._

_Who had she betrayed? When had she ever belonged to such a group of the weak?_

_Why should she care, that they die at her hands?_

_When they could not stop themselves from becoming the same brand of monsters they believed the Templars to be?_

Eleine came to, her head in her hands, breath a ragged thing. Her cheeks stung, and her right-hand brushing against her cheek found tears. 

A good person, Sven had called her. Used the example of her staying behind while they ran to prove it. 

If he knew her as she was, he would not think so. 

Her hands batted against her head. She would not have to worry about that now, would she? 

Because he was dying, dead. Un-saveable. 

The pure always were. 

In the end, he may as well have perished in the circle. In the end, she had not been worth enough to protect him. Even if she wished to give her life for his, it was not an equal trade. For what was she? Wretched, stained. A monster. 

The crack of a twig had her head snapping up. Her misted eyes obscured the eerie form of Solas.

What must she appear to him, she wondered. Hand buried in her hair, eyes wild, face streaked and crazed. A deranged beast, she was sure. She could not see his expression, but she could guess it. 

“Come to goggle at the beast?” Eleine snapped. 

Solas seemed to survey her for a few moments. “No one is ever devoid of change, Inquisitor. You may become better.” 

Eleine’s laugh rang flat, hard, and dangerous. “I told you once before, Solas. I’m incurable. And who would I change for now? To whom does it matter?”

“Sven,” he replied, and she broke. “I’m sorry,” she heard him say. But she was lost now. A hand landed atop her head, and she brought it out from her hands to stare up at Solas. “Even someone’s memory can be incentive enough. And if you hurt so much at the loss of someone you knew very little, perhaps you are far less savage then you believe yourself.”

He padded away, and the heat of his hand lingered on her head. 

Known very little? No, she knew Sven very well. 

Knew the smile he made when he was happy, and the one he made when he was hurting. Knew the fear that pumped in his veins that he would not be loved. Knew it in the way he shuffled his feet and hid the loaf of bread behind his back. 

She remembered the face he made when she had found him, curled up beneath his bed in the circle, just as those children had been in Haven. So open, so raw, so terrified. So desperate for something the world wouldn’t give him. Mercy. His eyes had begged for mercy. He had thought she had come to kill him. His eyes wide as moons, face white as bone. 

She could feel the weight of him in her hands, even now, as she had pulled him out and held him against her chest. How old had he been then? Fourteen?

He had looked up at her, shaking, but hopeful. Unable to speak, he had clutched at her front, testing to see if she would wrench away. 

_Eleine eyed the small hand fisted in her robe. She could imagine the tiny, brittle bones beneath that pale skin. So weak. She was brought back to his eyes. Two orbs of misty brown._

_So unsullied._

_She patted his hand, a stiff gesture. Unpractised, unlearned._

_He smiled, wide, hopeful_. 

Eleine’s head hit the bark of the tree behind her. Steam puffed from her lips with every exhalation. She had lied. They had never been passing acquaintances. 

She did not know what a son was, did not know what a family should be. She had had a brother yes, but he had never been her parent’s son. They had never been loved like family.  
But perhaps none of that mattered. She knew it herself, that blood was not how those connections were born. 

Maybe all it had ever taken, was a small hand pressing against the ribs that hid her heart, and her holding out her hand when he needed it. What then, was the Inquisition to her? 

Eleine’s eyes closed without her consent, and though her mind still trundled through noise, she fell asleep. 

Alone, as far from her companions as was safe. Just as she liked it. Just as she always did. 

 

_‘Sven,’ she called, trudging up behind him in the forest. Leaves crunched underfoot, and the dewy smell of the Hinterlands curled in her nostrils. She played with the carved wood in her hand, nervous to give it to him. She wondered if he’d like it._

_She reached out a hand, annoyed he was not responding. Her hand clasped his shoulder, and pulled him around. A lipless face stared back at her, teeth cracked from heat and skin blistered and melted._

_She screamed as his hair fell from his head, leaving behind a bald corpse. His back arched as though he took a blow to the head, and he was falling, falling. She held out her hands, to catch him, to save him._

_He was rent in half, torso separating from his legs. Noble ears and an angled face stared back at her, horror cut across his face as he bled out on the forest floor. She called out to him, hand reaching, fingers outstretched. Adahlen’s blue eyes stilled, emptying._

_The stench of death and innards accosted her, and she recoiled, scrabbling away on small hands and feet._

_She slipped into a sea of blood. It was a war of waves, slapping against her and pushing her under. Her limbs grew, and she was an adult again. Her hand caught hold of a rock, and she heaved herself up onto an island of jagged stone. She spat out blood that had seeped into her mouth, and it splattered against the obsidian ground._

_Her throne waited for her._

_Her robes fluttered around her, power and pain in every cut of the fabric. Lounging against the red of the throne, she observed her kingdom of gore. Wine waves raged in a frenzy beneath her. All her doing, all hers._

_‘I knew you would join me, my daughter.’ Hagan tapped his nails against the stone of his throne, eyes cast out to the sea._

_‘Why are you not angry with me?’ She heard herself ask. But the voice wasn’t hers as it should be. It was the pitch and squeal of a child. ‘He was your son.’_

_Hagan turned to face her, eyes two chips of bone. ‘He was nothing compared to you.’_

_The world concaved, and she was faced with mirrors of blood._

_‘There is no one like you, Eleine.’_

_She was caught in the prism of red. Her face splintered across the sheeny surfaces, and she saw her younger face, crying, on her hands and knees, begging for Adahlen to wake. Teenage Eleine grinned her macabre grin, carnage splattered across her pale cheeks and braids._

_She came face to face with herself._

_Mirror Eleine squatted, staff stuck into the ground before her imperiously. A bead of blood ran down from the bloodstone crystal. Before it could be lost to the pool already at their feet, Mirror Eleine caught it with her tongue._

_Eleine stepped back._

_Mirror Eleine traced the river the bead had made, hungry, up, up the staff. She stood before her now, and licked her lips._

_Two grey eyes stared at her. Eleine turned._

_Draped in his furs and armour, Solas stood watching._

 

Her staff shook in her hand, and her wild eyes tracked the inside of her tent. Her chest heaved, wet with sweat. She dropped her arm back to her side. She was alone. 

Wiping a shaky hand across her forehead, she tried to banish the images of the dream. She felt preyed upon. The sensation of Solas’ eyes on her lingered, sticky, violating. Her fingers spanned the space from the hollow of her eyes to the edge of her jaw. The skin there was smooth, untarnished. Cold and clammy. 

She evened her breath, forcing her heart to slow and stop railing against her rib cage. 

She cast glances around the tent, trying to remember how she had gotten here in the first place. A large footprint by the side of her bed answered that question. 

She did not know how long she sat there for, mind whirling through the mirages of a dead elven boy, and a ruined Sven. Hagan, sat upon his throne, Eleine beside him. And herself. 

She wondered whose blood it was on the staff. She wondered if Mirror Eleine had cared. 

Eleine’s hands dropped, lax, to her lap. She looked at them for a while. Traced the ruined flesh there. Scarred irreparably when she had tried to save Sven. The mark on her left hand oozed green, and she clutched it closed. 

Her right fingers remained splayed. The callouses on her palms from wielding her staff stared back at her. She opened her left palm. 

One hand for saving the world, one for destroying it. 

“It’s time to go, Boss.” Eleine looked up at the shadow Bull cast upon her tent. 

“Yes.” Eleine shoved her hands away into her leather gloves. She lumbered to her feet, and pulled on her scratchy pants and shirt, buckling them down with her belt and pouches. Slipping into her rough robes, she rolled up her bed and blankets. She held them out of the tent flaps, and Bull took them without a word. 

She unhitched her tent from the inside, not yet ready to face the trickling sunlight that was waiting for her outside. Only so much can be done from within, and after a few tense moments, she stepped out of the tents umbrage. 

Camp milled around her. Dorian bustled with his own tent, trying, it seemed to complete the exertion of taking it down without disturbing his hair. Bull loaded the mounts with their belongings, and Helaine and Solas conspired in the shade of a tree to her right. 

Solas turned to look at her as she watched them, and she widened her stance at the look in his eyes. Knowing. Suspicion took root in her heart. 

She cocked her head to the side, daring him to prove her true. He looked away, as though their eyes had never met in the first place. 

Eleine returned to her duties, taking down her tent and preparing it for Bull to pack onto the horses. 

With three days of travel remaining and an undefined amount of time spent fixing the chaos of Crestwood, Eleine fought the desire to turn back to Skyhold and seek out Sven, running her fingers over his unblemished skin. Just to check, just to make sure.

Eleine sat back on her heels, neck loosening to allow her head to dip. 

Day two, and she was already so maker damned tired. 

She felt her mind slipping, losing its traction on focus. 

They were on the road for three hours, before Commander Helaine pulled her hart up beside Eleine. Something Eleine ignored for the most part. Of no interest to interact with anyone whatsoever. No doubt any such engagement would end in biting words best left unsaid and unheard. 

Helaine began speaking, as though not to Eleine, but to the air before her. Like she was ruminating to herself. “The training was not pleasant for me,” she admitted, and Eleine could not help the tingle of interest that went through her. “When I first exited my circle, I was as a babe new to the world.” Not something Eleine could relate to. Eleine kept her eyes on the dirt path beneath them. “And then I was in battle, in defence of nation and name.”

Helaine was quiet for a moment, and Eleine wondered how well it had gone. “And the lines did form,” Helaine continued, as though she had not paused in the first place. “And my fellow mages took their position in the rear.”

When had Eleine looked over to her? Helaine turned to meet Eleine’s eyes. “And I stepped forward.” She knew the look in Helaine’s eyes. It was the same one she found in her own eyes after battle. Perhaps this was why Helaine wanted to teach her. Perhaps Helaine saw something in Eleine worth fostering. The commander held her hands out, head tilting back to the sky. “Then my place in the fray opened, and those of muscle and blade were around me, and I was not afraid. For I knew my role and worth, and soon,” Helaine held Eleine’s gaze, “did all others know them as well.”

She placed her hands back on her hart, but her eyes only grew more wild, more intense. “Any concerns I had that the knights would not heed evaporated. All knew their rank, their place, and the value of that to their lives.” She gave Eleine an inclined nod of her head, as though what she had just said was of significance to Eleine. Eleine, however, merely deigned the woman with a sniff. “Our blades were of different ken, but our purpose was clear and defined. On the field, in the battle, I command.” 

The rest of the day disappeared beneath Helaine’s voice, regaling Eleine with every specific of the importance of roles, hierarchy, and knowing one’s place. Then she dipped further into those wonderfully murky waters of how the magic worked. Eleine listened with a primed ear, and it took her settling down into her bedroll for the night to notice she had not been accosted with thoughts of Sven or her past since morning. 

She huddled into her covers. 

She knew it was of no matter now, that she had thought of them again. Tonight, again, she was sure, she would find the dead and dying haunting her. 

 

Eleine itched her eyes open. They felt like the snow laden branches around their camp. Weary, overburdened. Like a stranger in her own skin, she scrabbled to her feet, escaping the confines of her tent for the slapping cold outside. 

It scraped across her skin, frost sharp in the air. Her companions remained asleep in their tents, unaware. 

She stumbled her way out of camp, tripping and catching herself on a twisted bole. The tears that ran unbidden down her cheeks brought Eleine to her knees. She flogged her heart, using every reiteration she had to remind herself that she did not cry. That she did not love. Did not care. 

Not for stupid fools that deserved better than her. 

Still he smiled, and grinned and held his hand out, needing, wanting her affection. 

She had let herself cave, let herself slip. Her hand had reached back and it was too late, too late now to take it back. 

Day collided with the night, and she forced herself back to camp, wrenching herself together with every ounce of her will left. 

Bull was her saviour that day. More than aware of her distress, it seemed, he distracted every member of the company. Including Helaine. Great booming laughs rolled off his chest, and he told story after story. The Chargers got up to a lot of ridiculous things. 

Eleine enjoyed not a moment of the tales. Maker, she needed silence. She needed to be alone. She had never been so colluded with since she was a child. 

No one dared bother her in the circle. Not after… not after it had all begun. 

Part way through the third day, a raven cackled overhead, and Eleine turned suspicious eyes to it. Sure enough, the feral bird swooped for her, and the parchment rolled in its feet had her sucking on her teeth. 

She held up her forearm, and those talons extended, missive still held by some measure of capability, and the bird rammed into her arm. 

She thinned out her lips as she extracted the scroll and passed off the raven to Solas beside her. 

A rather long missive from Josephine alerted her to the fact two Ferelden lords had gotten into a fistfight and destroyed her throne. It took her a few moments to banish the face of Mirror Eleine from her mind. 

“Anything bad, Boss?” 

Eleine shook her head, and passed it off to Bull to read. His laughter attracted Dorian, and together they traded barbs, mostly aimed at the expense of “rustic southerners”. 

“What will you do, Inquisitor?” Solas held out the raven, and she allowed the bird to hop back onto her arm. 

She ignored the suspicion that told her he really had intruded upon her dream. “Nothing,” she replied. 

“You will need a throne.” Solas seemed as argumentative as he always was. Whoever had raised him had done a terrible job of teaching him the tact and timing of these things. 

“Is that so,” she intoned, voice bland, dry. 

“There is someone already awaiting your judgement, is there not?” Solas pressed. 

She rolled her shoulders. “Do you wish to see me on a throne, Solas?” _Tell me you already have_ , she dared. 

Solas cocked his head. “I wish to see how you will judge.”

She spat over the side of her steed. “And how I will lead. And how I will live. And how I will breathe, and bathe and _sleep_.” She rounded on him, and there was no inch of her face or demeanour that brooked further argument. “Go scent after another for a few minutes, I have more important business to deal with than your expectations of me.” 

He did. She rubbed at her eyes, and searched for some parchment and quills she was sure she had stuffed in her pouches at some point. 

_Josephine._

_I hardly care. Have it replaced as you like. Nothing Orlesian, nothing Ferelden. Absolutely not Free Marchers._

_I have full faith in your taste._

_Eleine._

Eleine leaned back, working out a brewing cramp in between her shoulders. She put the quill between her lips, and rolled up the parchment. She presented it to the raven, and it unsteadied form her shoulder, wings beginning to flap, gaining air. It hovered before her, and for a moment she felt like she saw Leliana in those eyes. 

And then it was snatching at the paper, and heaving itself off into the sky. 

She watched it dwindle away to a speck, before her mind slipped under into the waters of her thoughts again. She angled her horse away from her companions. 

 

A leather bag slapped down to the ground beside her, and Eleine looked up from her reflection in the stream to eye its spilling substances. The moon glinted of a sharp dagger.

She turned to a stern Commander Helaine, derision on her every word. “I’m afraid you’ll need more of a dowry than that for my father to give my hand.” 

“If only the rest of you was as skilled as that tongue.” Helaine nudged a sword back into the bag with a booted toe. 

“My, you’re quick to want a demonstration. But I don’t dislike the eager.”

Helaine gave a suffering sigh, and rubbed at her forehead. “I see you’re the type to torture others for your struggles.” 

Eleine jerked to her feet. She wiped her wet hands on her trousers. “You want to fight?” she challenged, “I’ll not say no.” 

Snow crunched beneath Helaine’s boots as she drew up close to Eleine. “Never, revel in the fight. It is the lives saved, that you must delight upon.” 

“It is the lives I take,” Eleine breathed on Helaine’s face, “that bring me pleasure.” 

“No,” Commander Helaine stepped back, “it is the fact that you did not die, while they did.”

Eleine cocked her head. “You all seem to think you have me figured out.”

“You barely know yourself,” Commander Helaine stated, “or you would understand why you still cry at night two days away from Skyhold.” 

Eleine crouched down, hand curling around the hilt of a blade, and pulling it from amidst the bag to eye its edges. The snow laden trees were caught in its reflection. Their skeletal, blackened boles and branches cut through the white of the landscape. Her grey eye flashed back at her, all anger and pain. She looked up at Helaine. 

“I know better than you think the balance of a blade in my hand.”

“Show me.”


	16. The Inquisitor's Commander

Shards of green taunted her from across the waters. She had known she was walking into hell. Thedas was a veritable mess. There was nothing else to be expected. 

But this. 

This was far worse than even she had concocted in her imaginings. Her fingers sunk into a drenched crevice in the stone wall before her. 

Her companions seemed to share her sentiments. Dorian huffed and smoothed out his moustache by her side, agitating its dishevelment further. Solas stood still, far tauter than his usual stance. Bull unsettled from foot to foot, and Helaine muttered to herself. 

Eleine blinked, and the churning waters were no longer murky blue, but a sea of blood. She blinked again, and the scarlet mirage was gone. She clutched her arms. 

Scout Harding joined her from their scattered camp, freckled face disturbed. “Crestwood was the site of a flood ten years ago during the blight.” She pointed to the whipping rift, as if it needed any more help drawing their attention. “It’s not the only rift in the area,” she reported, “but after it appeared, corpses started walking out of the lake.” 

“Vishante Kaffas,” Dorian spat beneath his breath. Bull assented with a grumble. 

“You’ll have to fight through them to get to the cave where Ser Hawke’s Grey Warden friend is hiding,” Harding finished, mouth drawn thin. 

Eleine’s hand closed around her staff, pulling it from its buckles and sheath. “Delightful. We leave now.” She gave Scout Harding a nod, and placed Dorian under a stern eye. “No complaints about the weather, no complaints about mud.” 

Dorian presented her with a false smile. “My dear, I have never done such a thing, nor will I ever.” 

She hummed, already setting out down the sodden road. “Of course, Dorian, how absurd of me to suggest it.” 

“I’m sure one day I shall come to forgive you,” he clucked behind her, “but in the meantime, you must ruminate in shame.” The heavy steps of Bull’s hulking form seemed to sync with the pounding of her heart.

Scout Harding called out to them before they got too far away. “Maybe someone in Crestwood can tell you how to get to the rift in the lake. Maker knows they’ll want to help. Good luck, and please be safe.” 

Eleine pivoted on her heel, staff bared at her side. “Keep these men safe. And report to me appropriately, this time.”

Harding gave a few firm nods, and Eleine returned to stalking down the road. 

Dorian hummed. “Mm, tough love, again, I see.” 

Eleine stepped over a deep rut filled with murky sludge. “You’re incessant.” The sky rumbled overhead, and Eleine shook her head at Dorian’s smacking lips. Could not contain himself, it seemed. The first splatter of rain did nothing to uplift their spirits. 

“Could we truly not have taken the mounts?” Dorian miffed. 

“Oh, and you were doing so well,” Eleine snarked. 

“Enough,” Helaine snapped, “you are both squabbling children.”

Eleine reached out her left hand, running her gloved finger tips over the wet surface of the cliff beside them. “Forgive us, mother.”

“Commander,” the woman barked. 

The road opened up before them, and whatever snotty comment Eleine had prepared died on her lips. 

Carnage. 

Through the rain, through the cloying scent of the sea, ash coiled in her nose. She would never forget, nor ever misplace that particular odour of a burning body. The way lighted hair stunk. The brand of perfume only smoke possessed. 

The clash of steel punctuated her moment of pause, and she and her companions were running. Her staff was a blur before her, the movements so practiced, so innate, she had no need for thought. 

Two clambering corpses were alight in moments, and the mist in the air sizzled to steam. The hintings of a village gate caught in her eyes, and she wrenched herself onwards. Her companions dispatched of the cadavers, and joined her as she careened to the service of two sentry men. 

A shade’s distorted arm arched up, claws curled and prepared to gouge one of the men. She slammed her staff down, and magic sprung from her. 

Before even the writhing beasts of her flame could reach it, Helaine was there, spectral blade in hand, cleaving the demon in half. 

_Blood everywhere. And other things too. Her hands were stained with it as she crawled along the ground. But he was gone. There was no body left. Stolen by wolves perhaps._

_Dead, and gone._

_‘Found ‘er, Boss!’_

Eleine stumbled, unnoticed by her company. Solas fended off another shade, while Dorian’s lightning made a ruin of the emaciated corpses. Bull swung his great hammer around by Dorian’s side, protecting the Altus whether he’d admit it or not. 

And Helaine.

Helaine was a presence unlike any she had seen before. Her beautiful form consumed Eleine’s vision, and it was entirely without conscious will that she stepped back, as Helaine stepped forward. 

Her blood roared. 

Not for any warrior before, not Cassandra, not Blackwall, had she relinquished her right at the front. It had taken no words from Helaine, no movement. Merely the force behind her seamless swings and the vicious power rolling of her in waves. 

_All knew their rank, their place, and the value of that to their lives. On the field, in the battle, I command._

Eleine danced out of the way of a shades cruel claws, bringing the blade of her staff down upon its disproportionate head. It screamed, and she blew out a spark of fire, not waiting to see it catch upon the creatures tattered clothes. 

Everything else but the keen of the kill drained from her. 

One wretched body after another she sought, and soon there was none left but she and her company. 

Dorian wiped sweat and rain from his brow, accepting the healing potion she held out to him gratefully. She eyed the gash in his side stitching itself up as he drank. She wondered how Bull had not managed to keep that one away from Dorian. 

One of the sentries, with grey hair and a lined face, jogged up to her. “Thank you for your help,” he puffed, “but I fear we haven’t seen the end of these creatures.” Eleine gave him a nod, eyeing the cuts in a lattice work all over his body. She flicked her fingers at Solas.

“How many did we lose?” a nasal voice called from inside the wooden gates. 

The sentry turned back, unaware Solas had appeared at his side. “No one this time.” 

The other sentry hobbled to their side, supported by Helaine, and far younger than the other. “Did you see?” he trembled, “the corpses are coming from where old Crestwood used to be.” Solas finished up his inspections of the elder man, and moved on instead to the far worse injuries on the younger man. 

“Amount of people we lost back during the blight,” the first sentry replied, eyeing his now unblemished skin, “I’m not surprised.”

Dorian seemed to have collected himself now, and leaned over to whisper into her ear. “New Crestwood, one would presume.” He jutted his chin out toward the village. Eleine nodded her head in agreement. 

“Robert,” the elder sentry introduced himself, “Inquisitor, please. The Mayor could use your assistance.” 

Of course, he could. All too weak to handle their own problems. “Make sure your guard of the village has established rotations, Robert. I will not leave the village to return and find you have all perished from exhaustion.” 

Robert nodded his head, face smoothing out into far less deep lines. Eleine joined Solas, watching as he worked on the younger man. His brow was lined with deep ruts. 

Eleine shook her head and eyed Robert from over her shoulder. “Have this young man switched out now.”

His feet splashed away to the village in a moment. “Go speak with the Mayor,” Helaine adjusted the somewhat unconscious boy, “I will handle their guard.” 

“You heard her,” Eleine said, following behind the woman, “let’s go.” Bull, Solas and Dorian stalked behind her as she entered the despondent village. Wooden cottages peeked out at them, drenched in rain and seeming as miserable as the live occupants. People were scattered around, most injured, others weeping inside buildings. Thunder beat overhead, and she heard the screams of a few children. 

“We are going to help these people, are we not?” Dorian worried. 

“Would I be here if we weren’t?” she snapped, booted feet leaving deep tracks in the sludge. “Do not pretend that you all don’t know where I’d rather be.”

Dorian lowered his head. 

Eleine rolled her shoulders, sidestepping a cowering man in front of her. “I don’t need your sympathy.” 

She strode on ahead of them, asking a coherent villager where the Mayor was. After a few more minutes of navigating the despair, they found what would be considered by these people as a luxurious home. Larger than the others, and decorated on the outside, it radiated authority. 

She wasted no time barging through the door. A man with shaggy grey hair snapped his head up at their entrance. “The Inquisitor?” He bumbled around in his house, hands jittering at his side. “Mayor Dedrick of Crestwood,” he introduced, deciding, it seemed, to just stand before her. “At your service, despite everything. Are you… here to stop the undead?” 

She scented rat all over him. “The undead are appearing because of a rift in the fade. How can I get to it?”

Dedrick looked appalled. “The light in the lake?” He considered for a moment. “it’s coming from the caves below old Crestwood. Darkspawn flooded it ten years ago during the blight. It wiped out the village, killing the refugees we took in.” His eyes skittered around the room and Eleine loomed over him, distaste roiling through her stomach. This man was not to be trusted in the least. 

“I saw a dam,” she intimidated, “if we drain the lake, I can get to that fade rift.” 

Colour leeched from his skin. “Drain the—“ his mouth hung open, and she ghosted her fingers over her staff. “There must be some other way.” He reeked of panic. 

“There’s not,” Bull gruffed behind her, voice dangerous, “there’s really not.” He knew same as her, she was sure.

Dedrick scrabbled for something to say. His eyes lit up. “You’ll have to evict the bandits in the old fort to use the dam. I can’t ask you to risk your life.” 

“I can assure you,” Eleine murmured, voice dripping with violence, “they will be of no danger to me.” 

 

They had only managed to travel a few hour’s out to Caer Bronach before the weather intensified and they were forced to the shelter of a few musty caves. Moored in for the night, Eleine stomped around the entrance of the cave. 

Rain lashed at the ground before her, and she cocked a hip, leaning against the slimy stone beside her. Dense as the Storm Coast, it waged on. The crackle of their camp fire and the low tones of her companions leaked through the roar of the rain. 

Bull gave a high whistle, and she looked at him over her shoulder. “Dinner’s ready, Boss.” 

Sure enough, wafts of his expertly made gruel tickled in her nose. She relinquished her post by the cave entrance, far more interested in filling her belly with warm soup. 

Dorian scooted over to make room for her by the fire and she accepted the bowl Solas prepared for her without a word. 

The clatter of spoons on bowls bounded off the stone walls. 

“You got siblings, boss?”

Eleine lifted her head, slow, to look at Bull over the snapping flames. “Why the sudden interest?”

Bull shrugged, and Eleine did not buy the movement at all. “We all know so little about you, thought I might as well ask.” 

A shifting glance to all her companions showed their attention was wholly on her. 

_Fingers wrenched on her hair. Wrought of steel and madness they were inescapable._

_‘Wait till I’m done with you, El.’ Breath on the side of her face. Putrid, hot._

“I had a brother.” She unclenched her fingers from around her spoon. 

Dorian let out a whistling breath from his plump lips. “I’m guessing he would not be the sort of fellow we would like to meet.”

The red of the flames swallowed up her vision. “No.”

“Had?” Bull pressed, and she wondered what he wanted from her. 

“He’s dead,” she answered, voice cold. 

“I hear bandits were big trouble around Ostwick.” Bull leaned on his knee, elbow crooked. 

“There were no bandits strong enough to combat him.” She remembered the vicious swing of his sword. The glint of madness in his dark eyes. The leer that cut his face into a picture of cruelty. 

“What was his name?”

Eleine looked over at Commander Helaine. She blinked. His name? How many years had it been, she wondered, since she had said his name. Aloud, or in her head. 

Unbidden, her lips moved to form the syllables, the sounds of terror and pain that had haunted her for years. “Samael.” The whisper hissed around camp, and she ignored the slight shudder Dorian gave. 

“How is your mana?” Dorian asked instead, face queasy. 

She blinked. How long had it been since she had checked? Her fingers dipped into the gathering pool in her core. It swirled, agitated. Half way there. 

“Well enough,” she responded.

“Then we have work to do.” Helaine put her bowl down beside her, and swept to her feet. “Come, Eleine.” 

Eleine watched her stride further into their cave. She sucked on her teeth. 

Solas held out his hand for her bowl, and she rolled her eyes. Striding after the woman, she rolled her shoulders. 

She called after the commander. “Teach me to summon weapons.” 

Commander Helaine’s chuckles multiplied in the small stone space. “You think you are ready for that burden?” 

Eleine clicked her tongue. “Spare me.”

Helaine paused, and turned back to her. “You believe all offense is defence. You are a fool.”

“Fool?” Eleine cocked her head, “no. Experienced.”

Helaine shook her head. “A Knight Enchanter must first be capable of defence at all times. You stand in the front, not to take pleasure in the kill, but to protect those behind you.” 

Eleine let out a silent breath. “And you wish me to develop a stronger barrier, I presume?”

“Far more than that,” Helaine commanded, “you must have one that can absorb any blow.” There was a spark in her eye. Eleine assumed there was more than just the face value of those words. “Prepare yourself,” Helaine readied, “and defend yourself.” 

Eleine eyed the dim space they had around them. About two arms width on either side and around. She snatched a handful of her mana, and threw it around herself to simmer into a barrier. 

And Helaine was upon her. She lunged backwards, out of the way of her wicked punch. Her foot caught on the wet surface of a rock, and she fell to the left. Unbidden, her hands raised to catch herself against the slick wall, and she fell to her knees just in time to dodge Helaine’s next blow. 

In such a manner, they continued till Eleine was ragged, without breath, and strength in her limbs. Helaine’s foot shattered through her barrier, and Eleine slammed into the cave wall. Slime stuck to her cheek. 

Groaning, she pulled herself upright, patching her barrier as fast as she could before Helaine descended upon her once more. Every attack of her own she attempted, Helaine yelled at her. Not a time to fight, the woman howled, but to defend. 

After each time she winded up on the floor, Eleine could care less and less. 

“Again.”

Eleine scraped dirt off her tongue, trying to find a clean part of her glove. 

“Again, Eleine,” Commander Helaine insisted, to which Eleine continued to ignore. Again? The woman was mad. Eleine may not have a lot of it, but she did have some pride. 

And it was a keening, bruised mess right now. 

“It’s your footing,” Dorian commented dryly somewhere behind her. 

Eleine shot a filthy look at him, to which the man scuttled away. As she agonised to her feet, head throbbing, she found herself glad at least some of her companions were still scared of her. 

“A Tevinter mage he may be,” Commander Helaine sniffed behind her, “but he was correct. You are sloppy, driven by anger and hurt. You must learn to temper that into a sharper focus.” 

If that woman were to fall off the face of Thedas in the next second, Eleine would not spend a moment mourning. 

“It’s dark,” Eleine snapped, hands waving over her head at the cave ceiling. 

“Pathetic excuses,” Helaine dictated, “you must feel the terrain with your body, know it in your soul.”

Eleine put her hands on her hips, and let her head fall back. A scuffle behind her had her throwing herself out of the way, and stumbling over another rock. 

Catching herself this time, Eleine whirled around to shoot an accusing look at Commander Helaine. 

“Again.” The woman reeled in her extended arm from where it had swept to whack Eleine. 

“Or?” Eleine challenged. 

“Or I will have you running around camp again.”

“Do you really think you could make me do that a second time?”

“The more you struggle against me, Eleine,” Helaine barked, “the less you learn.” Eleine widened her stance, bringing her fists up next to her face. Helaine nodded her head, approving. “Again,” Helaine ordered.

And so they continued, Eleine pulling her barrier around her, reinforcing it with everything she had. Shatter after shatter, it was not enough. 

“Your barrier is of the most importance to a Knight Enchanter,” Helaine yelled as she pivoted, leg careening for Eleine’s flickering blockade, “without it, you are vulnerable, with it, you are untouchable.” 

Eleine stumbled back, feeling the force behind the blow slam into her own body. Helaine had not broken her barrier, but by all things holy, she was powerful. That leg curved up again and Eleine scrambled to infuse the cracking veneer of protection around her. Not enough, not in time. 

Down she went, catching the full force of the blow on her hip. She slapped into the cold earth, a low keen aching through her throat. As she heaved upon the dirt, wasted body quaking, she heard the clatter of a rock bearing unwanted company.

She looked up to see Solas raising his brows at her. 

Eleine spat out bile to the puddle in front of her. 

“Solas,” Helaine, looked back at the passing elf, “if we may have your help for a moment?”

Eleine trembled her way onto her elbows, panting and holding down fresh waves of nausea. 

Solas padded up beside Helaine and inclined his head in interest. 

Commander Helaine turned back to Eleine. “Raise your barrier.” 

She did as she was told. Straining and exerting all of her concentration, Eleine forced the vestiges of her mana into a sphere around herself. 

“Good.” Helaine leaned over to whisper into Solas’ ear, and Eleine braced herself, knowing whatever was coming was going to be dreadful. “Ready yourself, Eleine.”

Eleine spat. “Do your worst.”

Helaine smiled. Her hands came up in front of her, and she drew them back. A motion so familiar, one she had seen Sera perform a hundred times before. A spectral bow sprung up beneath Commander Helaine’s hands, an arrow nocked and pointed at her head. 

Eleine grinned, feral, hysterical. 

The ground rumbled beneath them, and Eleine began to laugh. Shards of earth splintered and raised, their tapering forms turning to face her. 

“Well?” she screeched, “fucking _bring it_.” 

“Withstand or die, Eleine. That is your choice.”

She reared up onto her knees, hair falling loose around her face, and hands splayed by her sides. “ _Come!_ ”

Hell descended upon her. She could see nothing but the flare of her barrier and the press of ashen earth and arrows. She felt her barrier crack and shake. It was thin, too thin, to withstand the onslaught. Her whole being shuddered beneath the strain. 

She scrambled with her mana, unsure what she needed to ask the fade to strengthen it. Her mind skipped over images of all things strong. Great thick stone walls, an arm bearing a blade, iron bars and chains. A body draped in red, fur around his neck and hands resolutely on the hilt of his sword. 

A boy with tawny, wild hair, smiling to anyone and everyone, smiling past hurt and fear. 

Her barrier began to give way, and she screamed, hands pushing out from her. She clenched her eyes shut. 

She could feel the power behind their magic, exerting against her own. Feel the strength. Her lips opened wide. A terrible, terrible growl. 

Her mana shot out, fingers of power and need, and clenched around the force that lay outside her barrier. She wrenched. Solas cried out, and Eleine grinned. Her spectral fingers snatched at the mana behind his magic, and heaved it into her instead. 

She felt flushed, full to bursting. Her dry well was dry no more, but a torrenting fountain. Maker, if this was what he was using to project the stones, the stores of mana he must have… 

Solas was far more powerful than he tried to let on. That she knew now. 

Her barrier teemed with power, radiating heat that sizzled across her skin. 

But she was not satisfied. 

She wanted Helaine at her feet. 

She extended her fingers of mana, seeking, hunting. And there, a magic arrow bounded off her barrier. She consumed it. And the next. And the next. Absorbing the force it wielded against her. 

And then there was silence, and a clearing vision. Dust curled and roiled in the air, but her barrier remained whole, stronger than it had ever been. Her body was alight with magic. At last she was reunited with her flames. With her power. Her strength. 

She ignored the shaking hands that clutched at her arms. 

Still not strong enough to help Sven. 

She gathered it up into a ball within her, compacting it into a pulsating mass of power and anger. 

Her arms snapped out, and it blew up. Out, out, it roared. Eleine sat within the centre of a sun. Flame scorched outwards from her, an explosion rendering the world a canvas of red and black. 

It howled around her, and it was with utter joy, true delight, that her mouth opened. A dragon’s maw, screaming her pleasure alongside its song of destruction. 

Again, she was Eleine. 

The eddies of flame flickered to a spark around her, the swirling mass wisping out. Oh, how she had missed that clogging scent of ash. The way it stuck upon your skin, entered your mouth with every breath. She stroked the pulsing fabric of her barrier, and allowed it to siphon back into her core.

From the clouds of soot, she saw her companions amongst the harbour of a combined barrier. Both were crumpled to the ground, limbs clashed in their haste. 

Helaine staggered to her feet. “Good.” She looked half-crazed, half-ecstatic. “But you must go further. You must learn to steal any form of force.” She stumbled to Eleine, hands clamping down around her shoulders. “All force is power, and all power can be stolen. Magic or steel and flesh.” 

Eleine grinned beneath Commander Helaine’s gaze. 

 

The gates of Caer Bronach were far less impressive up close. Chipped, rotted, the wood seemed to be much the same as the rest of Crestwood. 

Eleine rubbed her forefingers and thumb together. No blood beneath them, not yet. Her eyes tracked the quiet fortress, unable to see any bandit sentries in the dim, early morning light. The sky was overcast as yesterday, and though Eleine was grateful that it made them harder to be spotted to closer they drew to the fortress, it was irritating to watch the word drown in hues of blue and grey. 

Dorian hunkered down beside her, breath shallow, controlled. “I’ll wager we’ll regret leaving cover and assaulting the gate.” 

Eleine gave a sharp nod. “It’s too still. Something is amiss.” She looked over her shoulder to Solas, Helaine and Bull. A sharp jerk of her head, and they were off, following Eleine down the boulder they had hidden behind. 

She could smell it. Danger. 

A twig cracked beneath her boot, and there was a low growl to her right. And then her left. Dorian cursed beside her as two scarred mabaris stalked from the shadows of the fortress wall. 

They had moments. Moments to silence them, to prevent the rest of the bandits knowing they were here. 

Her streak of fire and Dorian’s lightning were not fast enough. Barks sounded from them, strikes to her heart, and there was a cry from inside the fortress. 

“Bull!” she yelled, yanking the blade of her staff from the chest of one mabari. He was a whirlwind of might beside her, hammer spinning and spinning before crashing into the door, splintering it into thousands of pieces. Eleine was hot behind him, feet landing with eager force. 

A hail of arrows bounded off her sizzling barrier, and she grinned. They’d have to do better than that. A rock fist flew overhead, and Eleine had no doubt Solas was dealing with the archers. Not much could be seen past the chaos of the fight, and she focused as much as she could on her footing. Her magic tore from her, whipping around her staff as she tried to temper it into small blasts of blistering heat. Lightning singed in the air alongside her fire, and she delighted in the booms and crackle of Dorian’s magic. 

Helaine flashed past her, spectral blade proud in her hands. Eleine felt a heat rush through her that had nothing to do with her magic. Boundless, was Eleine’s power. 

Yet there was no bandit here that feared her more than Helaine. Because the commander was something else, something more. 

Something Eleine must have, must be. 

She felt her mana coursing from her in searing blasts, and the world dissolved to ash and smoke. A woman stepped before her, raggedly dressed and bearing a sword in two hands. 

The bandit dipped, ready to spring up and sweep down with her sword. Eleine could see it, could see where she would go. Where her feet would plant into the ground, the space in the air that would be filled with her slashing arms. 

She remembered the weight of her staff in her palm, the evenness of it as she had once held it horizontal above her head. The stretch and rip of her muscles as she had heaved it over her shoulder to impale the Venatori mage. 

The fade loomed in her mind, pressing against her skull. She had only to ask, she knew now. 

Her mana flooded to her hand, rippling and writhing. Like her flames it roiled, but as her hand came level to her ear, she felt it harden. White, ghostly and shimmering with an inner flame, her spectral spear careened for the bandit woman. 

Through the woman’s neck it went, sending her flying backward towards the wooden stable. 

In matter of moments, an unknowing bandit stepped backwards, right in the path of the spear. 

There was a dreadful crunch and gurgle, and two bodies slumped against one another, dead. Like ragdolls, they hung suspended, limbs lax and awkward. 

“Oh.” Dorian ambled up to her, shocked eyes on the man he had just been fighting. Now impaled through his eye socket. 

“Oh,” she replied. 

“ _Oh_ ,” he exclaimed, and she nodded, as dazed as he was. 

“The last?” she asked. Dorian nodded, eyes immoveable from the bandits. 

There was a manic cackle behind them, and both her and Dorian swung around, frighted. Commander Helaine leaned against the rotting fence, pounding her knee with her fist. 

“I knew there would be power in you like no one else,” she hollered, and Eleine smirked as Bull took a step away from the woman, eyeing her as if she were a dangerous beast. “No instruction from myself, nothing but observation,” the woman crowed, “and yet you have perfected the spear.” 

She raised her hands in a mockery of salute. “The Inquisitor! Eleine of Ostwick, beast of burden and fire!” 

“Shut your mouth, before I burn your tongue from it.” Eleine’s fingers clenched, staff tight beneath her hand. The air was hot, pounding against her skin. She felt it stifle, suffocate the fortress. 

All laughter left Helaine. “You will be a foe the likes of which they have never seen.”

“I always was,” Eleine gave a harsh hiss, “since I came upon my magic.” 

“I will watch you,” Helaine vowed, “as the world will watch you. I will know you, as the world will know you. What will Eleine Trevelyan do with the power I have shown her, I wonder?”

Eleine stamped her staff down on the ground. Her limbs buzzed, and her magic twitched in agitation. “Let the world know you,” she condescended, “the Inquisitor’s Commander, coward to the end.” 

“Your reach is vast. And it is final, Eleine.” Helaine began stepping back, pulling away outside Caer Bronach. “The world will be shaped beneath your fingers. Know this. I believe in the woman I saw writhing beneath my foot. I only hope you hold onto her long enough to see the world for the beauty that it is.” 

And she was gone, nothing more than a wisp of snapping fabric. 

Eleine could feel those grey eyes on her. 

“I am more than familiar with dramatics and impact,” Dorian clucked at her side, “but surely there was no reason for her to leave?”

“There is no place here,” Eleine contested, “for two commanders. And you are mine, not hers, to lead.” 

Dorian looked to her then, and his expression was inscrutable. “I shall hold onto the hope,” he finally breathed, “that you will be better than most to follow.” 

“Considering I have yet to threaten _your_ tongue for all the blathering I have been accosted with,” she eyed him, “I have to say you are in luck.” 

He gave her a wan smile. “Indeed, a fine point. But perhaps that says more about my character than yours.” 

“You flatter yourself far too much if you think I am fond of your company.” Her stomach clenched, and Dorian looked away, saying no more. She turned back to their prey. Stone walls and squatters consumed her vision. “Rally yourself, Dorian. I smell blood.”


	17. What I Am To Become

Decay and rot swirled in her mouth, and bile rushed to meet it. All air was gone, devoured beneath the sight before them. There were no words to share, no utterings of horror enough for them to express the carnage. 

So they stood, paralysed, eyes captive to the sorrow etched over these abandoned homes and the bones within. The residents of Old Crestwood tumbled, scattered, dead.

Her trembling hand came up to cover her mouth, to stem the flood of stench into her nose. 

Dorian cursed behind her in bouts of aggravated Tevine. How he had the stomach to open his mouth, she did not know. 

Her feet sunk into the muck and mud, and each step caused a horrid squelch. Her fingers traced down the decayed wood of a small cottage, and she looked through misted eyes at the bones of a child. A mother’s arms wrapped around her, useless, desperate. 

“Inquisitor.” Solas lay a hand upon her shoulder, summoning without the heart to demand. 

Eleine creaked her way to her feet, holding back the bubbling rage that pressed at her skin. She jerked her head in acceptance, capable of nothing else. They trudged through the misery without a word, Bull occasionally giving rough swings of his hammer. 

The cave entrance was not all that hard to find, a few metres to the right of the Mayor’s old home. She surveyed its drenched face for a few moments, knowledge brimming in her mind that he was somehow responsible for this. Eleine turned her head away, to the wood scaffolding of the cave entrance. 

Dorian was warm, sizzling by her side. She shoved the slimy wood door open, and together they descended down into the rank and wet of the caves. Her palm burst with flames, and dancing shadows followed their every step down. The tunnel grew narrow, and Dorian was forced to squeeze through behind her, slime and sludge catching on his shoulders. His light curses bounced off her shoulder blades, a rhythm for her to step to. Occasionally one of Bull’s horns would get stuck on the roof, and they would have to stop to while Solas helped free him. Though she couldn’t see him, she could just imagine his hulking frame bent over almost in half, shoulders shoved all the way forward to fit. The fact that he was not making more of a fuss was by no small amount surprising. 

At last the tunnel began hollowing out, and they filed into a larger cavern within minutes. A translucent, crimson head turned to look at her. She stared into its eyeless face, body dipped in stone. Bull jerked behind her, voice harsh through a myriad of curses. 

“A spirit of rage,” Solas whispered by her side, “born of pain and anger.” His words bounded around the room, meeting her ears time and again. It faced her, body wisping in and out of existence. 

Then it contorted, arms splayed at its sides, shoulders thrown back. It cast its head to the ceiling and opened a formless mouth. Silence thudded in her ears, where she knew there should be a furious bellow. 

And then it was gone, streaking down through another tunnel. 

Eleine flicked her wrist, sending her fire writhing across the slick sand to illuminate forgotten sconces. Their uneven breathing filled the abandoned space, and Eleine rolled her shoulders. 

“Come on,” she breathed, “let’s find that fade rift.” She could feel the fade pressing in on them, here. Delighting in their unease, in the lingering pain in this place. The fire that burned on her palm tortured the pallid walls and sand into ruddy complexions. Reaching stalactites and stalagmites loomed beside them, twisted forms they jumped at every so often. 

Dim drops of water followed their advance, and a larger rush of water began to echo through their channel. She urged them onward, hungry for sunlight, for anything but this stale air of rot and misery. 

Finally the tight space gave way to a natural chamber, bare to the reach of sunlight. Eleine flinched at the spray that flicked up at her face from a chute of water pouring down from the outside. Dorian shouted something at her, but she could not hear him past the thundering of the water. 

He pointed somewhere over her shoulder, to their right, and though his words were still lost to the noise, the pinch of his lips and brows told her what she needed to know. They picked their way through the outer ring of the chamber, and Eleine eyed the edge of the hole scaffolded with perished wood with no small amount of distaste. There, almost nothing more than a chip in the side of the cavern, a nook cut into the stone. She dragged her feet through the sand to it, blood rushing through her veins. 

Armoured bones waved hello, suspended by a rotted neck and rope. Eleine whipped out her arm, holding her companions back from entering the small alcove. Too late. 

A fleshy hand shot from the loose sand, and an emaciated torso, ripped, sanguine, rose to face them. Before it so much as took a step toward them, ice rent through its body, pale blue shards staining with red. 

“We must get down to the rift,” Solas hurried, cold steam wisping off his staff’s crystal. 

She turned her back on the creatures in this alcove. Dorian cursed the whole way down the sodden wood path, and the whole way through another set of tunnels. 

When he finally silenced after their scuffle with the despair demon and undead, she did not find any reprieve in it. They explored the decayed skeleton of some past structure, and grew quickly more taciturn with every crunch of bone beneath their feet. Bedrolls and bodies stared back at them. They looked on in silence. She wondered what their screams would have sounded like, being swallowed up by the roar of water flooding the caves. 

Onwards they trudged, laden with the scene that lay behind them. The lower they spiralled, they became aware of a structure of far more sophistication peeking out at them. 

Eleine interrupted the agitated stream of her fire to toss some into hollow sconces. They bled light across the Dwarven hall, and Eleine eyed the vaulting ceiling, searching for spiders. Less affected by the water as the rest of the system, it seemed, the ruin held strong and decayed only in the sense of mould. Their steps slapped against the wet stone. 

“The Dwarves built well,” Solas commented by her side, “their ruins still sing.” She strained her ears for any such noise, but silence boxed them in, and she shot him a look. Solas merely smiled in return, and she clicked her tongue. 

Her mark crackled, and Eleine clenched her hand closed. “We’re close,” she growled. 

“Let’s get this over and done with, hm?” Dorian chattered, “I’d much prefer to leave this place behind in my nightmares.” His words died on his lips as they rounded the corner, and Eleine’s vision was consumed by a molten body rearing above them. A rage demon, twice as large, twice as monstrous as she’d ever known them to be, cocked its bulbous head down to eye them. It expelled searing heat with each mockery of a breath, and Eleine shivered. Such power, such ferocity. 

Her staff clipped against her back, unneeded as a blade of coruscating pearl hardened in her palms. Lightning whipped past her, striking out at the demon, and she swept in close to it. There was a body somewhere there, she knew, clasped beneath the magma armour.

And so, the struggle began, with her and Dorian keeping it occupied, Solas dealing most of the damage with his ice. Bull swung around them all, hammer blocking blow after blow to them. Chaos came to toy with them, driving them into corners to escape the beast, and ripping opportunity after opportunity out from under them. But Solas was of equal power to its machinations, she knew, and eventually, it was a sculpture of ice, shattered by Bull. 

“Fucking demons everywhere,” Bull jawed, “at least there are no more tunnels.”

“Yes,” Eleine agreed, heaving in breaths over her knees, “quite.” 

Solas loped up beside them, stone faced. “We must continue.” 

_Really?_ She wanted to snark, _and I’d wanted to sit down and have a picnic_. Instead she prowled onward, tracking the shadowed corners of the ruins, ears primed for another demon lurking around corners. Her left-hand shook, clenching without her doing, now. It spasmed, and she followed the heightening of pain. “Close,” she ground out. 

Close, indeed. A hollow door carved into the thick stone sat at their left, desiccated bodies at the entrance to greet them. A chamber flooded with green and the spawn of nightmares opened before them, and Eleine regretted not having caught her breath. 

Three shades descended upon her at once, and she clapped her barrier shut around her in moments. Just in time. 

They bounced of its searing surface, and she felt the force of it pour back into her. She grinned. Long, thin, her spear writhed into form in her palm. She barrelled her way into the room, stabbing and hacking at the shads from the safety of her harbour. Bull slammed through after her, rushing for two despair demons that had caught sight of her. 

The room crackled and boomed, and lightning singed through the air. Solas’ ice joined it soon, and it was a tempest of magic, a feast for her eyes. 

She released her spear, blade singing into her palm instead. Heat seeped from it, and as she took on two shades, she let out booming laughs as it melted their bodies with each slice. She lunged forward, blade sweeping low, to cleave through bone and sinew. Its head flopped to the side, and landed with a squelch upon the patterned stone. One more, by her right. She danced with it, absorbed with the parry and thrust of the encounter. 

Slick, cold terror dripped down her spine. The air stifled, and she whipped her head around to find a Terror, spindly, enormous, leap up before Dorian. 

How had he gotten all the way over there? Halfway across the room, she would be unable to help him. Her eyes were devoid of Bull’s bulky frame, no matter how she sought. 

Those gnarled talons raised above his head, and her stomach fell to the floor. If he were her, he could survive such a blow. If he had her barrier, he would be untouched. But Dorian was not her. 

Did not have her barrier.

Her blade flickered from existence, her hand outstretching. The shade to her left was moving, moving, sweeping. And her barrier was gone, a shimmering trail careening across the stone floor. It flickered, and clapped shut around Dorian. 

Pain shattered in her head. Her world teetered to the left, a mirage of shapes and colours. Her head slapped against the ground, and for a moment she saw nothing but black, heard nothing but silence. 

_That hand pushed her under, bone fingers and claws clenching around her throat. Eleine choked, mouth opening, heaving for air._

_But blood poured in. Seeping into her eyes, her ears, her mouth. It was everywhere._

_She twitched and contorted, blind and deaf. There was nothing but currents of wine and blood._

_‘Now, now, Eleine. All this fuss,’ Hagan drawled from his throne, ‘He was just one elf boy. There is no shortage of them. They rut like animals, festering in our forests.’_

_All she could see were those feet pacing toward her, and she pushed herself to look up, crane her head up above the hand pressing it down. Long, thin, fingers clutched a golden chalice. Hagan stood above her, and tipped it._

_Eleine flinched as wine splattered across her face, red as the blood of her lost friend, red as Samael’s. It curved around her nose, and she could smell its reek. The stench of debauchery, of defilement._

_That hand shoved her under further, and she strained her eyes to see the form that held her._

_Mirror Eleine leered down at her, licking her lips._

_Wake, Eleine._

_Wake._

Instinct drove her eyes open once more, and the pull of her body to the right was not conscious. Her name, screamed in strains of terror, pitched to the vaulted ceiling, and sent her scrambling away from the shades next blow. 

_“Eleine,”_ Dorian was yelling, trying to untangle himself from the demon he was facing. _“Eleine.”_

She spat out the blood seeping into her mouth from her throbbing lip, but could not find the time to assure him she was alive. Wraiths pressed in on her, attracted to the visions she had just wrenched herself from. They swarmed, and she batted them away, flame pouring from her hands. 

Their corporeal bodies lighted and writhed, fighting to release themselves. But they were devoured beneath her fury, beneath her power. Bull crashed past her, knocking her shade to the ground, and splitting it in half with his hammer. He shouted something to her, but she missed it beneath the rattling scream of a despair demon. He thrust his finger out, and she followed its path. Rift. Right. 

Eleine darted her way through the chaos, a streak of tattered robes. But she was too far to close it, and there were too many demons to destroy. She heaved in a breath, hands curling before her mouth. Her fire gathered in her throat, a roiling mass of heat. More, more, she sought. Her body shook, and with every breath, the world around her was swathed in ash. 

Her magic slammed out of her, battling with everything in it to burn, to annihilate, to hurt. It roared amongst her palms, moulding itself around the form she insisted upon. She threw it upon the ground, watching as it grew, feeding upon the closest shade. 

A blazing cyclone hunted around the room, a spinning mass of death. Though she would have liked to delight in the sight of it devouring the demons, she pushed on, eyes consumed with green. 

It licked out at her, the veil’s tattered fabric winking open every now and then to spit out another shade or wraith. Her mark throbbed, and she raised her hand. The rift yanked at her, fighting to remain cleaved open, and she soon lost feeling of anything else but the searing agony in her palm, and the floor beneath her feet. 

She was coffined amongst jade, beneath waves of foreign mana. And then it clapped shut, and she stumbled back, catching herself from falling. 

Gasping pants slid around the room. Aching quiet scraped inside her ears, and she looked around to find the room obscured in clouds of ash. “Dorian?” she called, “Bull? Solas?” 

“Here, Boss,” Bull coughed, and a large hand waved through the soot, soon followed by the rest of his large frame. 

Dorian and Solas appeared beside him, sagging and clutching at their chests. Dorian held his arm over his mouth, no doubt trying to breathe past the ash. She hobbled to them, struggling with her own lagging limbs. “Hurt?” she asked. 

Bull shook his head, horns carving through the black air. Solas similarly waved his hand, and motioned to her. She shook her head. Dorian, however, nursed a lump on his brow, and a few cuts over his body. He looked at her, eyes wide, immoveable. Eleine panted, and flicked her fingers towards Solas.

He didn’t move. “I saw you,” he murmured, “saw your head hit the ground.”

Eleine wiped a tremulous hand across her slick brow. “Not for long.”

He shook his head, and stalked out of the room. She cleared her throat past the dryness there, and worked her way to stable breathing and heart beating. Figuring the Altus had a good idea, she motioned at her companions to follow. They collapsed outside, sinking down amongst the alcoves of the hall. Wet stone met her pounding forehead, and she curled herself up. 

There was no measure of time for them to know how long they remained there, but it was a long time before anyone dared suggest they return to the village. 

 

“Inquisitor!” she was hailed from the gate, “please, the Mayor has gone missing.” 

She paused, and heat flushed through her. Her fire reared up, clawing at her skin. Ash puffed out with her next exhalation, and she strode through the gates, pushing past the milling villagers of Crestwood. She began to jog to his cottage, a terrible noise in her ears. His door loomed before her, and she kicked it in, crunching over the shards, and scoured the house. 

Gone. 

“Inquisitor,” Solas called, and she stalked to him. He looked up at her, eyes brewing with something fierce. He held out a flimsy slip of parchment. She ripped it from him, and poured over the shaky strokes. 

_Inquisitor:  
It was not darkspawn that opened the dam and flooded Old Crestwood ten years ago. I did, in secret, the night they attacked. The undead you have been fighting are people I killed with my own hands._

_We'd taken in refugees from the Blight. Many were ill. We moved the sick to the lower part of Crestwood, and the refugees into the caves, to stop the disease from spreading. It didn't work. One confessed he'd seen blight sickness before. It was always fatal. When the darkspawn attacked, I knew the only way the village would survive is if the blight-sick drowned with the monsters. I cannot bear the sight of Old Crestwood now that the water is gone. I cannot stay._

_I'm sorry._

_Mayor Gregory Dedrick._

She shoved it back at Solas before it lit to flame beneath her fingers. Helaine came rushing into the room, mouth opening, and then closing upon the look on Eleine’s face. 

“Bring him to me, Helaine,” she commanded, “drag him back by his throat.” Helaine gave a sharp nod, and was gone. 

She whipped around the room. “He did that.” She stormed back over to Solas. “Those people,” her arm thrust out in the direction of Old Crestwood, “he killed them.” 

“And now has attempted to evade justice,” Solas agreed, “he must be brought to face consequences.”

“Is that what I am to become?” Eleine breathed. Her hands shook, but she kept them by her side. “Are these the things that I will do?” Would have to do? Is that what it meant to be a leader? 

Solas studied her face for a few moments. “No, Inquisitor. I fear that you are too far away from corruptions grasp now, to become such a being.” 

She gave one of those laughs of hers. Damaged, pained. “You think me free of my demons?”

“I have seen your demons,” Solas pronounced, “and I have seen you overcome them. Every night, you turn to face them, and every morning, you rise above them.” 

She turned her head from him, and buried her fingers in her hair. A few hard breaths, and she was prowling back out of the room, accosted immediately by a pool of faces, turned to her, waiting. Robert stood before them all, brow an engraving of worry and tension. 

“Your Mayor has abandoned you,” she denounced, careless of the gasps and cries of the weary bodies before her, “just as he abandoned your families in Old Crestwood.” 

“No,” Robert fumed, “he was a good man.”

“He was a shivering coward,” she barked, “and you stand better off without him. He will be brought before me, and he will be brought to justice. And if you do not believe me, it was he who confessed in writing. Read it if you so please.”

“But what will we do now?” a man agonised, clutching a small girl to his chest. 

“You will have my protection,” she snapped, “as you already have. Anoint a new leader, and be careful about it.” They muttered, and cried, and mourned, but eventually stumbled off to their homes. 

An Inquisition scout slouched up to her, freckled face drawn. “Inquisitor. We arrived with supplies for the village. What has happened?” 

“I will report everything later, for now have the bodies in Old Crestwood and the caves extracted and buried,” Eleine ordered, and the scout nodded, mouth tight. 

“I wish to help,” Robert gruffed, still standing before her, “I had… I had a daughter there.” 

Eleine tracked the sprawl of lines across his face and the pinching of his eyes. “Stay away from the village and the caves.” 

He bristled. “I wish to help.”

“Stay away, Robert. You’ll find no closure there.” 

He ducked his head, flinching. “As you say, Inquisitor.” And he staggered off, back bowed. Eleine watched as he stooped between two houses, and she had no doubt she would never see him again. Bull ambled up to her, limbs dragging. 

She eyed him. “Where were you?” He raised a brow, inclining one horn. “You’re always there,” she snapped, “protecting him.”

“He leaves himself so open,” Bull grumbled. 

“You’ve been exploiting their holes your whole life.” Eleine turned to face him, arms crossed and hip cocked. “You know where he’s most vulnerable.”

“Yes, I do.” Bull looked away from her, across the milling people of Crestwood. Eleine followed his gaze, and found Dorian, crouched by some young boys, smiling and flashing his white teeth to comfort them. Bull gave her a slight wack on her arm. “Thanks, Boss.” 

Eleine shook her head. “Save it.” 

“That was a nasty hit, you took there,” he argued, eyeing her head from the corner of his eye. 

“Nothing compared to Helaine’s kicks,” she replied, voice dry.

Bull chuckled, chest rumbling with each sound. “She’ll be happy to know that.” Eleine snorted, and made to leave. Bull’s large hand around her arm pulled her to a stop. She shot him a look over her shoulder. “It may be nothing to you,” he said, “but it’s something to him.” 

She wrenched her arm out. “Get Dorian and meet me by the gate. No rest. We make for Hawke now.” 

 

Eleine clucked her tongue, her fingers ghosting over the parchment in her pouch. She had to deliver the report. Had to alert them to what had just taken place. 

Maker. A fake calling. Blood magic. _Heat like she had never known it, and pain. Pain within, and pain without. Betrayal. He was gone now; lost to all he had condemned. And he thought to call her weak?_ She gave a ragged sigh, head falling back to observe the speckled night sky. 

Blackwall would be appalled to hear it. She could hear his grumbling voice in her ear now, rough and calloused. Camp murmured behind her, Inquisition soldiers and scouts mingling with her companions. 

Eleine pulled out the blank pages, but her hands stayed still, clenched around the edges. What was she to say? The world was teetering off into chaos in every sector, every corner. This was just one more thing she would have to handle. Have to face. 

She did not need her gloves off to know exactly where the green leaked from her palm. Her responsibility. 

Maker, she was so tired. 

Her right hand dipped into her pouch, and snatched out a quill and some ink. She braced herself against the stone boulder behind her, and placed the parchment upon her knee to write. 

_Leliana._

_You can be sure no letter from me bears good news. But this time, I am afraid the situation is worse than we had thought._

_Crestwood is a cesspool. Bandits. Demons. Undead and cowards._

_The Mayor is being carted back to Skyhold as we speak for later judgement. I have a report attached that details that matter further. We managed to obtain an outpost I think will be of particular interest to your men. The location I have marked on the map, also attached._

_I have also obtained the necessary quarries and logging stands for work on the infirmary. I expect it to be situated as discussed, and an absolute priority._

Her hand stilled. Sven swarmed the forefront of her mind. He raised a hand in greeting. Just a hesitant wave of a few fingers. He let his head fall back to the tree behind him, eyes burdened with the loss of a family he had never known. 

Eleine evened her breathing, and prayed he was alive. Her next strokes were jagged, and she had no doubt Leliana would scent her emotions from them. 

_See to it. I will not have my return further marred by that incompetence._

_Now onto the maker damned monstrosity that is the Grey Wardens._

_The Orlais Warden’s believe to have all received their Calling. Hawkes friend, Stroud, has told me that he believes it to be fake. A concoction of Corypheus’ doing, in fact. And, as all cowards do, they have dissolved to their baser instincts, and turned to blood magic._

_There is a ritual being planned to occur in the Western Approach in the coming months. This is where the Wardens are migrating._

_I will stabilise this region, and return as soon as I am able._

_I fear we have time, but not enough. Have your scouts monitor the situation and keep me aware. If you feel I must return sooner, alert me at once._

_Eleine._

She held her head up from slumping against her knee with every ounce of will power she had. It only got worse. First the Mayor and the tragedy of Crestwood, and now this. 

She rubbed at her brow. 

“Business, business, business,” Dorian clucked. 

Eleine folded the missive, tying it up with the two other notes as promised. Fingers nimble, she pulled the ruddy ribbon tight before looking at Dorian over her shoulder. “Never too busy for a visit from you.”

“You say that, my dear,” he commented, tone dry, “but I am sure you meant the opposite.” 

She eyed his stance. Hands clenched by his side, shoulders thrown back, chin tilted up. “What ill news have you come to deliver?” _Maker, please. No more_. 

He came to stand before her, legs swinging forward in a dim reflection of nonchalance. He raised his hands up by his side, and gave a slight shrug if his shoulders. “No ill news. No more than what we have already heard, that is. A mad world we live in, wouldn’t you agree?” 

She sucked on her teeth. “Then I assume you are here to broach a difficult topic.”

“My, is this all you think—”

“I’m losing patience for your games, Dorian,” she snapped, “you wish to speak to me, here I am. Now speak, and enough drivel. I’m past it. ” She thumbed the scrunch of her brow, trying to pressure away the dull throb there. 

His hands dropped limp, useless, to his sides. Without words, he struggled to find another way to stall. Eventually, his chin dipped, his eyes sinking from her face. “There is no man nor woman who has entered your company for more than a few moments that doesn’t know you are a difficult woman.” His eyes flicked up to her face to see her raised brows. His lips quirked into a slight smirk. “Difficult, my dear, but still charming.”

Her fingers loosened, and the missive fell the few centimetres between her hand and the ground. She drew her knees up, and hooked her fingers around them. 

“You are a difficult woman,” he insisted, “but you are my friend.” 

Her eyes were stuck upon the bead of perspiration running down his temple. She watched it slide down his fine cheek, to plummet off the cut of his chin. She blinked, in some part thinking that the action would banish the scene from her mind. 

But he remained standing there, proclamation gone from his lips, but forever embedded in her heart. 

He gave a humourless chuckle. “A poor sentiment from one such as I, I know. What does a pariah know of friends?” 

More than her, she was sure. The air in her mouth was stale, and she gave a ragged inhale through her nose. 

“But I suspect, you do not know either,” he was saying, but she was half listening now. Her eyes watched the movements of his lips, wondering if they would form that word once more. “So, I had this brilliant thought – not unusual for me, I know – that perhaps we could muddle our way through discovering what so many others covet as the finest of relationships.” His hands were flourishing, flicking here and there as though conducting instruments or ridding themselves of water. 

She stretched out her legs, then brought them back up to her chest.   
“Of course, I do not expect any great… I—“ he broke off, sighing. “We’re alone, you and I,” he struggled, “but perhaps we do not have to be.” 

Cole’s voice slid across her skin. _Alone is safe, alone you can see it all. You can cut the pain away. It is too late. You are no longer alone. You cannot go back._

“I…” she halted, “I do not know.” 

She thought he would turn, would leave. But he grinned, wide, happy. “Tell me, Inquisitor, if faced with the perilous choice between an Orlesian delicacy or one of those scrumptious Ferelden cakes, which would you eat?”

She blinked. “Ferelden cake.”

“And what if that cake had been prepared by Cole?”

She curled her lip. “I didn’t know spirits cooked.”

“You clearly have not read a single true tome about the Imperium, then.” 

And it was in such a manner that she spent her following nights. Dorian would come to intrude upon her solace and ask questions that were strangely personal for their benign nature.

Which was her favourite flower and why. Why armour beneath her robes and not above. Why pouches oh her hips and not in pockets. 

As the weeks turned to a month, they struggled with Crestwood. They scoured the region for rifts, demons and bandits. They helped the village, the people outside it. It fought back, trying to wriggle out of her grasp. But it was in her hands now. Hers. And she would bring it to peace, whether the occupants wanted it, or not. 

The Inquisition flooded across the planes, the hills, the crags. And it relented. 

And the longer time passed, Eleine found herself growing more aware of the empty space beside her when Dorian was elsewhere. Eventually, unknowing or not, she sought out his company. 

She wished she could un-see the look of genuine delight on his face the first time she sat beside him at the fire. 

“My, my, I am the luckiest man in Thedas.”

She splashed some gruel into a bowl Solas passed her. “Do you want me to leave?”

Dorian flashed her a grin. “No.”

 

Crestwood sprawled before her, planes of burnished gold grass and rocks. Dorian prattled to her right, finely chiselled body arranged in comfort and fashion. He plucked at her shirt, and she shot him a look. 

“This,” he strained, pointing at a sizeable hole in her robes, “has moved past ridiculous to simply _humiliating._ ” 

She sniffed, and returned to surveying the quiet landscape. “Hang me,” she snarked, “for I have committed a capital crime.” 

“Oh, I do not blame you,” Dorian returned, flicking her robe away from him, “it is a sign of bad management.”

She knocked him with her elbow. “I do not need management. And our advisors are doing an excellent job.” 

“Not with your attire,” he persisted. 

She turned to place him beneath her unamused eyes. “I will find new armour and robes when we return to Skyhold. Does this satisfy you?”

Dorian grinned. “You would look spectacular in a Magister’s robes.” 

She yanked on his cheek, to which he spluttered. “You’ve insulted me enough for one evening.”

Rather than offer her a reply, he jutted his chin out at something in the horizon. Eleine followed his gestured, and squinted her eyes against the low sun. Sure enough, there was a shimmery black form just above the seam where sky met earth. Its movements were erratic enough to suggest a mirage, but the closer it drew, the clearer it became. 

Eleine held up her arm. 

Black flashed before her, consuming her vision with feathers and talons, and alighting upon her forearm. 

Dorian whistled at the raven, hand reaching out to stroke its back, and thinking better when it turned those white less eyes on him. She unfastened the scroll from the bird’s leg, frowning. 

_Inquisitor._

_The Infirmary has been built and Sven has been moved there. The Mayor has arrived. My agents have seized Caer Bronach._

_Return the moment you are able._

_I fear we have little time to prevent this ritual._

_Leliana._

Her heart scrunched up. “Dorian.” The man shot back, scratching his cheek as though he hadn’t been stealing a peak at the missive. “We’re leaving.”

“Inquisitor?” he asked, concern hazing his voice.

She swept to her feet. “Now.” 

She retrieved her staff from where she had dumped it, and clipped it onto her back. “Solas, Bull,” she snapped, startling them from their positions slouched against rocks, “we must return to Skyhold.” 

They were on their feet in a moment, following after her. Solas bounded on ahead of them to warn an Inquisition scout they were departing. Bull thudded along beside her. 

“You’ve changed, Boss,” he rumbled. 

Eleine shot him a look. “In what way?” 

Bull looked down at her, his one eye sharp. He waited for a few moments, seeming to gather his thoughts. “You were filled with so much anger before.”

Eleine stiffened. “Trying few weeks, as I am sure you know.”

“No,” Bull interrupted. “From the moment I met you, I could see it.”

Eleine withdrew within herself. She hedged away from the Qunari, wishing he would stop speaking. No such luck.

“It was in the way you moved,” he continued, eye now squinting at the pinking sky, “Your movements were so sharp. Your swaying hips were weapons. It was less of an invitation, and more of a warning.”

A hand crept up her throat, squeezing tight. “Is that so?”

Bull studied her. “You may have thought you were drawing people in, but every jagged swing drove them away a little bit more.”

Eleine scoffed, thinking of all the wandering hands she’d had tracing those hips of hers before the conclave. “Being close to someone,” Bull said, a gentle tone colouring his voice, “often has nothing to do with physical contact.” 

The hand dipped below her breasts now, slicing through her chest to clutch her heart. She wondered why Bull’s soft voice felt harder than any reprimand she had ever received. 

“How was someone supposed to become close to you, when you did not want them to?” 

Eleine let out a shaky breath. She couldn’t use her tactics against Bull here. Couldn’t protect herself the ways she knew how. He could see them, she knew now. And that would mean admitting to what he was saying. 

“You knew what you were doing – what you’ve always been doing. I don’t think you have wanted someone truly close to you for a long time. Now? I don’t know what happened,” Bull began to decreased his pace, heading to Dorian’s side, “but you seem ready to try. And I’m happy for you, Boss.” 

Turning her eyes to the dawn hues resting along Crestwood’s landscape, Eleine struggled with the pain in her throat. Solas returned shortly with mounts, and she heaved herself up onto her steed, glad for the reprieve for her feet. 

The journey back to Skyhold was as bleak as all their others before. Discomfort, cold and lack of areas to bathe had them all taciturn and snarky. She withdrew again, to the outskirts of camp each night, unable to stand another encounter of barbs between Solas and Bull. Dorian stayed for the drama, a fact she was grateful for. 

The reaching of Skyhold’s mountains into the stars was a sublime sight she had come to covet. When the thud of her mounts hooves turned to clops against stone, she felt her blood pound. 

Close. She was so close. Images of getting inside only to be accosted with awkward advisors, trying to break it to her that Sven was dead, haunted her. 

They were alone on the bridge. Night swathed the world, and she was grateful they had no witnesses to her return. 

By the gate, a scout waited for them. “Inquisitor,” the man hailed, clapping a fist to his chest. He held out the reins to her dark horse, and she gave him a nod of thanks. On her own feet once more, she struggled to stop herself swaying. 

“’Quisitor.” Eleine brushed herself off, eyeing the panting Art in front of her. Why was he… She paused. His eyes. He gleamed, he glowed. She shuddered. 

And she was moving – running, flying. The ground was a sea of darkened colour beneath her legs, the world an incoherent whirlpool. 

There was no time, no sound. Nothing but the beat in her heart that begged and begged. 

Her hands felt the rugged surface of wood, and she was bursting in through a door she had never entered before. 

And from across the room, a bald head turned to look at her. 

She was incapable of speech, of sound. There was no air in her lungs. She was beside him in moments, her hands clutching his sobbing form to her front, hands smoothing over his head, tucking him in against her chest. She held him – or perhaps he held her.

The solidness of his body, the weight, the curve of him against her. Real, all real, yet so foreign, so unbelievable, that again and again she had to pull back to look into those eyes. There was no trickery, no lie. 

Crying, weak, and pained, Sven was cradled in her arms. 

Alive. Heart beating. Breathing. Moving. Speaking. 

Alive.


	18. Of Vitriol and Virtue

“Shh, shh,” she crooned. Sven shook against her, head tucked in beneath her chin, arms wrapped around her. “I’m here, Sven.” She hesitated, and placed a kiss atop his head. 

Sven cried harder. Incoherent words babbled from his lips, and she pretended like she understood them, murmuring back. She could feel his hands squeezing her robes, clinging to her as though she may pull away and leave. They remained this way till Sven’s wet face came out from under her own, and blinked misty eyes at her. 

She smoothed away the fresh tears on his face, still mumbling comfort to him. He closed his eyes beneath her affections, and his breathing grew shaky and ragged as he held off more sobs. 

“I’m sorry—“ he broke, and let out a wracking cry. She pressed her thumb over his lips and hoped he didn’t feel how it trembled. 

“No,” she agonised, “no, Sven. I should have gotten you out first— I should have…”

Sven shook his head, and pulled her finger from his lips. “No, it was _my_ fault,” he cried, “I should have told someone else about the kids but I—“ He ducked his head, his next words so quiet, so low, they went almost unheard. “I wanted you to be proud of me,” he agonised.

Eleine used his distraction to hold the back of her wrist up against her eyes, trying to force the water that had rushed to them back inside her body. She wrestled with her breathing, but lost in the end. “You _silly_ boy,” she wept, “I was. I already was.”

Sven shuddered, and his head hit her chest. He bawled against her, emitting strangled cries. She let him snuggle in, enjoying the feeling of him so close more than she had ever thought she would. It was different from the closeness of her past lovers. 

She knew others would consider her stupid, to be startled by that revelation. Bull, in particular. 

But Sven – even as he was now, full of hurt and pain and regret – holding onto her as though she were capable of soothing all his worries away… it filled a part of her she had not known was starving. 

Warmth tingled inside her. 

She gave a surreptitious sniffle against his head, and placed another kiss on his stubbled cranium. Light, half hoping he would not have felt it. He was quietening now, dropping against her, arms loosening their iron grip. 

He noticed and pulled her closer. “I’m tired.” His voice was thick with tears. 

“Sleep, Sven,” she murmured. 

He shook his head against her chest. “What if I don’t wake up?” 

She wondered about that, too. “You will,” she replied instead, and pulled him back to look into his eyes. “Because if you don’t, I’ll haunt you.”

He gave a wet smile. “Will you be here when I wake up?” 

“If I’m not,” she said, “send for me.” He nodded, and she shook her head at his sagging eyes. Eleine stood and helped him lie back, settling him into the prim white cot. His rough head poked out from lush covers, and he slowly blinked up at her. “Sleep,” she comforted, and soothed the lines on his forehead. 

“You’re nice, today,” he mumbled through laden lips. 

She gave a sharp huff of laughter. “Don’t expect it to last.” 

“You’re always so nice to me.” His breathing slowed, and she watched him, straining over the rhythm of his chest and the fluttering of his eyes behind his lids. He twitched, and she worried over comparing the deep sleep he had been trapped in and his state now. 

She considered shaking him awake, but released hold of his shoulders before she could. She clenched her fingers around her arms. Tracking the signs of his slumber one last time, Eleine straightened, and looked around the rest of the infirmary. 

They had done their job well. Smooth stone shined back at her, and rolls of bandages and herbs stacked in ordered lines around the room. They were alone, no other patients needing to be kept over-night, it seemed. She spied a few doors around the place, but did not care enough to investigate them yet. She would be back in the morning and could inspect it then. 

For now, she had to address her companions she had abandoned, no doubt hovering outside, confused and wary. And attracting attention, if she had come to know them at all. 

Hand around the cool metal door knob, Eleine looked over her shoulder at Sven one last time. She made to turn the handle, then paused, and took a few deep breaths. Alright. He was going to be alright. 

He was awake.

She fought to even her breathing and rubbed at her eyes. She would be back first thing in the morning when he woke. 

The door creaked open. Cool air curled through the split to caress her face. 

She sucked on her teeth at the shadow that fell over the dirt entrance. 

Art looked up at her from his slouch against the wall. She left the door open behind her, feeling a weight come off her chest. Eleine cocked her hip and crossed her arms. “Staying with him?” 

“Aye,” Art nodded, “want ‘o make sure ‘e’s wake proper now.” 

She forced her eyes to remain on the boy, and not wander to the sleeping Sven inside. “Take care of him. I will be back in the morning.”

Water shined in Art’s eyes. “Won’t le’ yeh down.”

Eleine paused. She placed her palm upon his cheek, fingers splayed just beneath the bags of his eyes. He stared at her, eyes wide. “Get some rest,” she ordered, “you’ll be assisting in his physical recovery. I need you at your best.” 

He nodded, and she noticed his bottom lip give a small wobble. “Aye, ‘Quisitor.” 

She removed her hand, and watched him slip inside the infirmary and close the door, before labouring her way to her companions. Dorian was barely containing himself, swaying from foot to foot, hand smoothing over and over his moustache. Solas stood still beside the massive form of Bull. She eyed the dark obscured silhouette of the Qunari and sucked on her teeth. 

“You look terrifying at night,” she chewed, and Bull gave a few contained chuckles.

“Naw, Boss. It’s not good to be jealous of others.”

“Well?” Dorian spewed out. His eyes worried over the dried lines down her face, and she scrubbed at them with her arm. 

“Awake,” she forced out, leashing her emotions with everything she had, “he’s awake.” 

Two wide grins flashed moonlight into her eyes, and she felt her own mouth stretch into a weary smile. Solas, the most put together of them all, dipped his head. “Congratulations, Inquisitor.” 

She gave him a heartfelt nod. “Thank you, Solas.” 

“Does this mean we get to see more of Mummy Inquisitor?” Dorian jibbed, but squeezed her arm. 

She opened her mouth to retort, but Bull jumped in before her. “I’ll miss seeing you glare at Leliana every time she dared say his name, Boss.” 

Dorian laughed, and she looked around to see if they had attracted any witnesses. None. She needed to get inside before that was ruined by her companions. “Eleine not unfairly antagonistic towards Leliana? The world would crumble in shock.”

She clicked her tongue. “First of all, I do not glare at the woman every time—” 

“And I’m not devilishly handsome,” Dorian snarked. 

She stared him down, but he only grinned wider. “And second,” she snapped, “I am appropriately antagonistic.” 

“Perhaps we should continue this scintillating discussion another time,” Solas wearied, “it would be troublesome to wade through crowds.” 

“A man of reason,” she muttered, “and for a moment there I thought I was surrounded by Bogfishers.” 

Dorian gave a mock offended gasp. “Bogfisher? If I am to be likened to a swamp creature, at least allow me Gurgut.”

She treaded her way over the courtyard to the stairs, her companions trailing behind her. She looked over her shoulder at Dorian. “They’re too majestic for you.” 

He scoffed. “There is nothing more majestic than I.”

Bull bumped him on the shoulder. “They teach that ego to every Imperium child?” 

Eleine snickered, cresting the remaining steps to the throne room. And froze. “Maker fuck me sideways.” 

Dorian bumped into her, retort primed on his lips. But it was silence that held the reins over their small group, and silence which drove the knife deeper into her chest. 

Red silk spilled from the vaulted ceiling, cast into deeper hues and shadows by flickering chandeliers. Nestled between the drapes, gold carved faces and bodies stood imperious over the hall, hands laden with symbols of the holy and the maker. 

Chantry heraldry was stamped into embroidered rugs upon the floor, and she withheld the nausea rising to her throat. 

But it was what sat upon her dais that revolted her the most. 

Her fire snarled and raged under her skin. 

Pallid light cut across the hall from stained glass apertures to gleam upon golden flames. They hungered up the contorted body of Andraste, whose hands clawed and begged. A throne cut of stone, iron and gold. 

“Vishante Kaffas,” Dorian spat, “what have they done?” 

“Not Orlesian, not Ferelden and not Free Marchers,” she bit, “the fool I am for trusting Josephine. Of course, the woman would delight upon my exclusion, and use it against me. What better political ploy, then tethering me further to the chantry?” 

“She is an intelligent woman,” Solas agreed, “she must have seized the opportunity you provided. No argument against it, and no way to know what she had commissioned.” 

“And now it is done,” Eleine continued, “and no tantrum I throw can possibly have it removed.” 

Bull shook his great head, horns swaying. He was the first to cross the threshold, leaving enlarged dirt tracks every step. She took perverse pleasure in seeing the snake lines of the chantry smeared with grime. “She got you, Boss.” 

“You have to hand it to the woman,” Dorian added, “she is made of firm stuff if she was prepared to face Eleine’s anger.” Solas hummed in agreement, and followed on quiet feet behind Dorian into the hall. 

She was left at the entrance, unable to move herself past the seam. She did not belong amongst the chantry soiled hall. And yet this was meant to be her place of power. Of judgement. 

She wondered if Josephine had arranged the argument between the lords, if her machinations ran so deep as to have orchestrated the destruction of her throne. _I have full faith in your taste,_ Eleine had said, validating any choice Josephine could make. 

Maker, she had been played for a fool. Her companions examined to hall, Dorian exclaiming over the fine make of the statues, and Bull critiquing every word he said, with Solas in silent admonition of their volume.

Andraste beckoned from behind them. 

The air was stifling inside the hall, alight with heat and pressure. She seared past her companions, feet blistering the stone. Moonlight flashed into her eyes as she crested the dais to stand before the monstrosity. 

Up close, the agony on Andraste’s face was sharp, a cruel cut of iron and jewels. Her companions clanked up the stairs behind her. 

Bull grumbled beneath his breath and Dorian responded with a few assenting hums. 

“Ghastly,” Eleine spat, vitriol infesting the air alongside the stench of chantry incense. 

“Boss,” Bull muttered, “you have no idea what you look like.” 

She whipped back around to face her companions. “Like a savage beneath the symbol of the _civilised_?” 

“You must allow,” Dorian began, eyeing her, “you were both powerful women. A savage? No. It… it is a striking picture, you up there.” 

“You… there’s something there, Boss,” Bull agreed, “I think Josephine might have been going for more than just playing the faithful.”

“I agree,” Solas declared, the timber of his voice sombre, “I feel you will garner more of a reaction than you expect.” 

“Andraste burned for her cause,” Eleine scorned, “and I’ll set the Thedas on fire for mine. Excuse me while I fail to see any wholesome connection between us.” 

“The world’s already on fire, I’m afraid,” Dorian sighed, “but you can decide where it burns.” 

“Who it burns,” Bull agreed, “maybe a few demons, Boss?” 

“And I must stand beneath the symbols of the institution that tried to crush me underfoot?” Eleine flicked her hands out at the drapes, windows and statues. “Their messenger, their prisoner?” 

“So far as I have come to know you, Inquisitor,” Solas contested, “you have always spat in the face of authority. Can you truly tell me the concept of holding rein over the space infested with chantry heraldry, does not amuse you to some degree?” 

She sucked on her teeth, but offered no reply. “The chantry is an institution of exclusion. The Inquisition is not.” But her mind was churning, following along the beat and pound of her angry heart. 

“You already know the answer to that, Inquisitor.” 

Eleine smiled. “My my, you all know me so well. I must have become an open book.” 

“Well?” Dorian hunted, “what wicked plan have you concocted in that diabolical mind of yours?” 

“Have you ever picked up an enemy’s own weapon, and murdered them with it?” she asked him. Dorian shook his head and her smile grew sharp. “There is no pleasure quite like it.” 

Bull whistled. “I definitely signed up for some fun, but you know how to throw one heck of a party, Boss.” 

“I will not be at the mercy of anyone,” Eleine snarled, “not the chantry, and not Josephine. They will come to see what happens when you place me under foot.” Never again, would she stand within their halls at their mercy. They were at hers, now.

“Oh,” Dorian delighted, “I would die a very happy handsome man, to see Mother Giselle’s face after you allow heretics to walk free. Sitting upon their throne, no less.” 

“Find me some heretics,” Eleine lilted, “and I’ll make it a reality for you.” She turned back to her throne. “I will show the world what the chantry could have been. I’ll spread it like a disease, and everything the clerics and mothers and sisters have clung to… will be ripped from their grubby hands.”

“Do include some passages about sex in the chant, will you?” Dorian grinned. 

She rolled her eyes. “I won’t be writing anything in the chant. I’ll offer myself and the whole world up to Corypheus before I become a symbol of the chantry.” 

“You already are,” Bull huffed, and she scowled at him. 

Dorian grinned. “Guess you better go find the old chap now then.” 

“I guess so,” Eleine snarked, “I am forever spoiled.”

“We can expect riots in the courtyard tomorrow then?” Dorian charmed.

“Perhaps,” she replied, thumb rubbing against her forefingers. 

“Oh goody,” he replied, “the south truly is a wonderfully amusing place.”

She shook her head, and turned back to them. “To bed,” she ordered, “all of you. Tomorrow is almost here, and we all need the rest. You especially, Solas,” she rose stern brows, “you’re silent crabby.” 

“I am no such thing,” the elf stated, but padded away to his room. 

“However shall I sleep with all this excitement?” Dorian clucked, swaying his way after Solas. 

Bull was watching her. She met his eyes, and held them. The Qunari walked away on heavy feet, eyes never leaving her. He said nothing, and she offered him nothing. 

The moment they were gone, she looked back to Andraste. 

She wondered how the woman would feel, becoming a symbol of Eleine’s vengeance and anger. None of her dreams had ever concocted such a nightmare as this throne and hall. 

Once, she had feared being tethered to the Inquisition as its leader, feared the eyes that would turn to her, hunger for her. 

Now, she feared the woman that would come to sit upon this throne, tomorrow. 

_I will watch you, as the world will watch you. I will know you, as the world will know you. What will Eleine Trevelyan do with the power I have shown her, I wonder?_

_Each day, and each night, I wonder what sort of leader you will turn out to be._

_Your reach is vast. And it is final, Eleine. The world will be shaped beneath your fingers. Know this._

_Her robes fluttered around her, power and pain in every cut of the fabric. Lounging against the red of the throne, she observed her kingdom of gore. Wine waves raged in a frenzy beneath her. All her doing, all hers._

“Though darkness closes, I am shielded by flame.” 

She watched the dancing moonlight on the flames for a few more still moments, before retiring to her room. 

It was with almost violent delight that she came upon the four-poster bed, of classic Free Marcher origin, copious covers of a deep red, with pillows nestled amongst more pillows. She had no energy to bathe, and crawled beneath the soft sheets with ecstatic haste. 

She saw Sven awake, last, before she was lost to waves of red and leering thrones. 

 

“Well,” Helaine drawled, “I’m impressed.” 

Eleine blinked, trying to banish the blur swimming in her eyes. Helaine’s frowning mouth and lined brow sharpened beneath her. Beneath her? 

Eleine held a hand up to steady her head. Her other hand? Where was… she squeezed her fingers, and Helaine grunted in pain. “Eleine,” the woman snapped, “wake up.” 

“Wake?” Eleine mumbled, “’M ‘wake.” 

“Then be so kind as to remove your hand from my neck,” Helaine snarled, and Eleine was shoved out of her daze. Helaine was crushed beneath her, trapped by Eleine’s squeezing thighs and knees. 

Eleine whipped back the hand that had been wrapped around the woman’s throat. “Oh,” she muttered, “who’s to say you did not deserve that?” 

“I came to wake you,” Helaine snarked, “I hardly find that deserving of being strangled by my impetuous and insolent student.”

“Or,” Eleine held up a finger, “your impetuous and insolent _Inquisitor_.” 

Helaine’s grunted in disgust, and reached up to slap the back of Eleine’s head. Eleine cried out and sprawled back on her bed, hands clutching her abused cranium. “I should think that title would belong to someone capable of managing their advisors.” 

“Andraste on a nug,” Eleine cursed, rubbing at the growing lump on her scalp, and kicking Helaine in the side, to which the woman gave a light grunt. She looked to her right, tracking the sight of the fingertips of dawn. It felt like she had only just closed her eyes. Perhaps not a sensation too far removed from the truth, either. 

“Andraste on your throne,” Helaine sniped, “infesting your hall.” She untangled herself from Eleine’s opulent covers, and Eleine couldn’t help her smirk as she watched the woman’s muttering over the waste of precious gold. “It is a disgrace,” Helaine spat, “a free mage beneath the heraldry of their escaped prison?” 

“Oh?” Eleine stretched out her legs. “This is the first I’ve heard such a sentiment.” 

“You allowed this,” Helaine ranted, standing over her. Eleine would have protested had she the time. “You became absorbed with other things, and allowed that wretched woman to manipulate you.”

Eleine swung her legs off the side of her bed, and swept to her feet. “I can only handle so much at once,” she contested, “and Josephine is hardly a wretched woman.”

“You intend to do something about this, I presume?” Helaine grasped Eleine’s arm, and dragged her over to her bathing station. Eleine resisted, increasingly confused why the woman was accosting her in her room. 

Eleine ripped the fingers off her arm. “You should not have to ask me that.”

“Yes.” Helaine snapped her fingers, and the air grew thick with her mana. Eleine’s tub filled with ice that steamed, and sloshed into heated water. “I know your vindictive ploys well. Now bathe.”

Eleine dug her feet in. “Forgive me, _Commander_ , but I am not a child. And I am certainly not a woman whose room you can sneak into at night. Unless of course—”

“Oh, shut your mouth for once,” Helaine exploded, “I will not allow such a subversion of authority as that woman attempted. She overstepped her bounds, and must be cut down to place. And you will manage nothing with your current appearance.” Helaine flicked her wrist, gesturing to the smudges of dirt over Eleine, and her knotted hair. “Now, _bathe._ ” 

Eleine cocked her hip and crossed her arms. “What unholy thought led you here, believing you had to manage my hygiene?” 

“Do you know what cows your enemies the most?” Helaine advanced on her, eyes a roiling storm. “It is your first steps onto the battlefield. In those moments, they see your power, they taste it in the air. Do you think stumbling out of your room, groggy, draped in tattered cloth is going to reduce your audience to gibbering awe?” Helaine’s arm cut down through the air, and she was boxing Eleine in now. Hunting towards her, matching step by step, till Eleine’s thigh bumped into the edge of the tub and they were nose to nose. 

Helaine’s breath puffed over her face. “You are power, you are force. You are Eleine Trevelyan, Inquisitor of the Inquisition. We are your tools. Remind that woman of it.” Helaine took a few steps away from her, and Eleine forced her chest to still, lest the woman notice it heaving. “When I returned with the Mayor, and stepped foot into that hall, I knew what had to be done.”

“Indeed you did, dear.” Eleine’s head snapped up, and she stalked to Helaine’s side in her bathroom’s doorway. Vivienne reclined on Eleine’s ornate couch, finger idle, tracing swirls and coils in the silk stitching. “I myself think it’s a rather fabulous design. The gold is a bold statement the Inquisition needed. Now we have only to cap the towers, charge for bunting in the courtyard and purchase a great deal of soap. But,” she cocked her head, “there is nothing quite so bitter on the tongue than audacious inferiors.” 

Helaine cut off her protests. “Madame de Fer was irreplaceable in the commission of your armour and robes.” 

“Is that so?” Eleine drawled, “many thanks for your unsolicited help.” She would organise for a lock as soon as possible. 

Vivienne crossed her legs, prim smile on her lips. “You’re welcome, dear.”

Helaine grasped Eleine’s arm once more, and brought her around to face her. “You are a Knight-Enchanter, now. Commander of your own soldiers. You are our representative, wherever you step. Do _not_ disgrace us. Now,” Eleine was shoved towards her bath, “bathe.” 

“I’m assuming you are both here to stay?” she wearied, tugging off her bed shirt. 

“Indeed, dear,” Vivienne called from the other room, “I will not have my work spoiled with the heavy hand of impatience.” 

Eleine muttered to herself as she undressed. The strike of boiling water against her toes was infatuating. She gave a lingering moan as she submerged herself, head tipping back to be swallowed by the rippling surface. 

Time drawled past her as she scrubbed her body and oiled her hair. She picked apart the strands and washed them thoroughly, melting beneath the pressure of her fingers against her scalp. 

Heat steamed from her skin as she stepped out of the tub, scarred hands reaching for a towel. She cleansed herself of the water and dried her hair with puffs of hot air. Each monotonous action, so familiar and practiced, incited the uneven beat of her heart. 

Each task complete, she was closer to sitting upon that throne. 

“Eleine,” her commander bit, “stop dawdling.”

Eleine’s next breath puffed out ash. “As you say, Commander.” She wrapped herself up in the towel, and strode from her bathing chamber. Rounding her bed to where Helaine and Vivienne colluded, she cocked a hip. “Well?”

“Just on the bed here, dear,” Vivienne charmed, supple mouth smiling. 

Black spilled across the red of her covers, and she saw whipping ash in the fabric. Chocking rooms and coated bodies. The grin that cut across her face was something that would have cowed lesser women than those in her room. Her fingers reached out, and skimmed over the fine fabric, eyes drinking in the sight of gleaming silverite. It was a three-piece outfit, far more complicated than the eyes could understand. 

“Dyed Lurker scales.” Vivienne pointed a manicured finger at the sheen and gradation of the cloth. “And this,” she tapped that fingernail on the metal chest plate, “silverite.”

Helaine came to stand beside her, her presence just the same as it had been, all those days ago, when Eleine had found her in the courtyard. Shoulders back, stance wide, and eyes sharp. Helaine regarded her. “Let us not waste more time, Eleine.” 

Eleine dropped her towel, and stood before them, bare. 

“I was right,” Vivienne remarked, “you have just the curves for it.” Whatever response Eleine may have given was lost to the bustle of clothing her. The undergarments were thinner than what she preferred to wear, the breast amplifier a concoction of Vivienne’s no doubt. The slide of those Lurker scales up her legs was beyond pleasing. The leather was tough and durable, but flexible. It lay upon her body like a second skin. 

Buckle after buckle was clasped, and Eleine tracked the whole process with ardour. She was to do this herself next time, and missing a step, according to Vivienne, would be disastrous.

At last, she stood dressed, before a mirror she had never known she owned. It was strange, seeing herself not through the murky sheen of red. 

“Just as magnificent as I knew it would be, dear,” Vivienne praised herself, and for the first time since their unfortunate acquaintance, Eleine found herself in agreeance with the woman. 

Ash swathed her body in glistening robes to be occasionally interrupted by gleaming silver. The outer robes were fastened around her waist to taper in and flare out and Vivienne had buckled the fabric on the inside to expose her leather clad legs and booted feet. The resemblance to the Tevinter style was amusing and – there was not a doubt in her mind – purposeful. 

Her robes were tight down her arms, and overlaid with thin, but strong, silverite scales. Her chest plate curved around her breasts, leaving her cleavage as bare as Vivienne’s. Eleine had withheld her comment on the design, but found it was as much a statement as the rest of the armour. Further silverite scaled down the outside of her legs, and she felt the chink of chainmail beneath her robes. 

Vivienne had insisted she leave her hair down, and had torn out the braids Eleine had begun with a pointed nail. Ink strands were left to tumble down her shoulders and mingle amongst the dark robes. Her eyes shone back at her, the silverite accentuating their smoky shade. 

_Mirror Eleine squatted, staff stuck into the ground before her imperiously. A bead of blood ran down from the bloodstone crystal. Before it could be lost to the pool already at their feet, Mirror Eleine caught it with her tongue._

_Eleine stepped back._

_Mirror Eleine traced the river the bead had made, hungry, up, up the staff. She stood before her now, and licked her lips._

Eleine blinked, and the vision was gone. But that wicked smile left a stain. 

Eleine stepped back, and faced Vivienne and Helaine. 

“It’s time.”

Vivienne gave a curling smile. “Yes, it is, dear. They will fear you, they will love you. They will want you. And they’ll know they’re not you.” 

Eleine turned to Helaine. She paused at the expression in the commander’s eyes. 

_Beast of Ostwick, lover of fire. The woman that will not bow. The beast without command. Eleine Trevelyan, mage of death and fury._

“Have the Inquisition gather in the hall and courtyard. I want them there the moment I’ve finished with Sven.” 

Helaine inclined her head. “As you say, Inquisitor.” 

“Gather our noble allies in the hall,” Eleine ordered Vivienne, to which the woman gave a secret smile and bowed her head. 

“Hurry to the boy,” Helaine commanded, “you must only be seen when everyone is gathered. You must do this right.” 

“I know.” And she was off. The stretch and glide of her armour was everything she had thought it would be. How she had managed so long in her crusty, tattered clothes, she had no idea. For there was something so pleasing about hearing the robe crack in the wind behind her strides, feeling the leather taut over her body. 

Eleine prowled through the chantry hall, fire snarling low in her belly. The rising sun reached through the windows behind her, clawing at her back. She was alone in the courtyard, and knew it would last for only a few more moments. 

The infirmary had remained empty except for Sven and Art. Art was collapsed on a stiff chair by Sven’s side, arms crossed and legs sprawled. She shook her head at the crook of his neck he would be regretting all day, and the wide, open mouthed snores he gave. 

Sven’s face was clear, unlined and restful. She traced his smooth brow with a fingertip, expecting ridges of worry and finding none. 

_I do not know why you are denying it, but you saved my life, saved so many lives— I will not let the world think less of you than what you are!_

“Wake, you silly boy,” she bid, poking him in his somewhat hollow cheek. Sven grumbled and she dug her finger in harder. “Wake, Sven.” 

Walnut eyes blinked up at her. “‘Leine?” he mumbled. 

“Good morning,” she greeted, hand cupping his cheek, “you have woken and seen me, now you may rest easy.” 

He gave a wobbling smile. “Thanks, Eleine.” But the smile slipped from his face. “What’s wrong?” he worried. 

Eleine rose a brow. “Nothing, Sven.” 

“Your eyes,” he halted, “you look… you’re angry.” 

She paused, and Art’s low snores filled the silence. “I’m always angry, Sven.”

“Not like this,” he contested, eyes slipping shut again. “Someone’s done something.”

Her fingers fell from his face, and he forced his eyes open again. “It’s nothing, Sven.” 

He watched her for a few quiet moments. “I almost forgot you could look like this.” 

“Like what, Sven?” She moved back from him, standing straight and looking down at his supine form. 

“Like you’re at war.” 

Eleine was already at the door, ears catching clanks and chatter of a gathering mass. “Sleep, Sven.”

“Hope you win,” he mumbled. 

The door clicked shut behind her, and she was immediately drenched in silence. 

Faces turned to her, a sea of open mouths and wide eyes. Eyes. Eyes everywhere. 

They moved away from her, and mutters sprung up after her first step. 

“The Inquisitor’s back.” 

“Can you see her?”

“Maker, she’s…” 

_‘There is no one like you, Eleine.’_

She was striding through their ranks, letting them ogle. Each puff of dirt beneath her feet, each weave through them, they grew quieter and quieter. 

The Inquisition heraldry loomed out at her from a scout’s armour and she withheld a leer. A symbol of the chantry that they had already twisted, tainted. Whether the world was to fall to Corypheus or not, there was no restoration of the chantry they had known. 

Not so long as she lived and breathed. 

_The world will be shaped beneath your fingers._

She crested the stairs, coming to stand before Cullen, who waited at the entrance of the hall. Her lips quirked into a sloping smirk at the storm on his brow and in his eyes. His hands jittered by his side, and she inclined her head to him as she swept past. 

But she didn’t stop, didn’t slow. 

Whatever sound there had been in the world was lost her first step over the threshold.

Her companions scattered around the hall, and they watched her, languorous, lax. But their eyes gleamed all the same. Adan, Tamoren and Abel watched her from a huddle at the back of the hall. Adan’s gaze was unforgiving. 

Each step resounded around the hall. A rock dropping from a high place. She met each gaze with her own, sweeping over their forms. They cowed. Each, and every one of them. 

Her feet planted their way up the dais stairs, and she came to stand before her throne. 

Andraste writhed before her, body forever at the mercy of flames. Eleine splayed her fingers by her side, mana sparking between them. 

And the incense lit, smoke coiling from it to suffuse the air with the scent of the holy, the beloved, the maker. Eleine turned back to the hall, eyes piercing. 

They watched her, faces pinched, whitened. Mouths somewhat agape and murmuring words in halting tones. 

She drank in their unease, their recognition.

Eleine looked down at Josephine, the woman readied by the steps of Eleine’s dais. 

Dark eyes met hers, and Eleine gave a slow, curling smirk. Fear lurked in the Antivan’s gaze. Those shoulders that were always thrown back, those limbs that were always poised, concaved beneath her eyes. 

Helaine’s face was contorted into a horrid grin behind Josephine, and Eleine looked away at last. 

“Bring me Alexius,” she commanded, now surveying her people. Josephine bowed her head, and snapped her fingers and two guards to her left. They slapped a fist to their chest, and scuttled off. 

Eleine picked through the faces in the crowd. Hunting for that moustache, that sweep of perfect black hair. That face drawn in worry. 

Dorian gazed back at her, eyes wide, begging. Mouth tight with hope, unspoken words of entreaty. 

She wondered how she was to counter her need for blood, with his need for mercy. 

She flicked her robe out from beneath her, and reclined, legs crossed, on her throne. Andraste suffered behind her. 

_I believe you are what we need. I hope we can be what you need, in return._

_I am coming to believe you may yet be shown a better way._

_I believe in the woman I saw writhing beneath my foot. I only hope you hold onto her long enough to see the world for the beauty that it is._

_I believe._


	19. Those Who Appose Thee

The room angled over a precipice of unease and tension, and Eleine delighted in every moment of it. Josephine’s uncomfortable shifts and shaking hands brought a sharp smile to Eleine’s face. 

She let the hall stew in silence, and took her time examining her opponents. Mothers bore their symbols of the chantry beside sisters and brothers, the odd cleric upturning their faces to Andraste’s agonised body. She had prepared her words, readied the phrases she would twist. The swords of the holy she was to wield against them.

Eleine tapped a nail on the stone of her throne. “As you are all aware, I am sure…” she drawled, her voice sweeping across the room and spilling out to the courtyard, “in the tragedy of Haven I almost lost my son.” The hall was bathed in heat. She raised an open palm. “But he was brought back to me, by a valiant of heart.” She found his whitened face. “Hail, Abel Dubois, the Inquisition’s elven healer.”

The room parted, and each face turned from her, to look upon him. There was a pulse, a heartbeat, then a stillness lay heavy upon the hall. _I won’t be writing anything in the Chant,_ she had said. No. For what need was there to write a new one, when you could just defile what already there? 

“Truly,” Eleine licked her lips, “the Light shines upon _all_ of creation.” Josephine dropped her head, and the room unsettled. Eleine watched the waters agitate beneath her words, fingers stirring a long stagnant pool. The Clerics swelled, turning back to Eleine, faces cut into sharp and hard lines. “You have my thanks,” Eleine charmed, “my everlasting protection and favour. You stand today and each day to come, as the symbol of this institution. You are the righteous, the light in the shadow of war.” 

All of the Chantry but Mother Giselle descended into fury. It was no secret among them that Abel, adopted by Andrastian parents as he was, still clung to his Elven beliefs. So long as she supported his right to his own beliefs, the Maker would not return. She sucked on her teeth. They should have known better than to manipulate her. 

“We’re at war,” Eleine continued, switching her legs over in a show of nonchalance, “and yet it is my hope, that for every one who stands and fights beside us, two souls are saved.” The world buzzed at her feet. She placed both hands on the calm of the room, and shoved it from that precipice. “And for those that oppose, to know the mercy of heaven. May their fields and forests flourish, their seas calm and carry them.” Shouts rang out alongside her words, and her voice raised above them. “May the wind lift dust off their nations, lightning illuminate their skies so that they may see.” 

The crowd surged towards her dais, unsettled guards catching them while Josephine entreated with them to calm. Her words were swallowed and unheard. Eleine whipped to her feet and the throng took a collective step back. “They may cry out to their gods as they please, and find the comfort the Chantry denied them.” 

“Abomination,” screeched through the hall, and Eleine caught sight of a mass of angry red to the right of the room. Those that saw Cullen by the wall were daunted into silence, but many raged on. _Abomination_ , rallied in her ears. Her? No. The Chantry was an abomination. 

She stalked to the edge of her dais, and raised her hands, face alight with heat and body thrumming. Those words were caught and scattered to the wind; with her so close, none dared scream it. “For we are the Inquisition. And we do not bring hate and pain, but peace! Let our blades pass through Corypheus’ rotted flesh, let our blood nourish the ground. Let our cries touch their hearts, and let ours be the sacrifice that matters to _all_!” 

It began out in the courtyard. A slamming, thundering crescendo that stole sound from inside the hall. For it was her soldiers that knew best of all. Why they had joined, the depravity that hung over the land they sought to liberate. They stood beside all races, and found nothing but the support of body and blade. 

“If I achieve nothing,” Eleine shouted alongside them, “let me manage at least to prevent voices raising in threnody for a world wreathed in flame.” There was a pounding of shields and swords, and soon the beat invaded the hall. Some nobles thumped their canes and mugs against the ornate tables, her companions slamming closed fists against the stone walls. Voices raw and wild swept through Skyhold, a potent hand of change. 

Some of the Chantry left the hall, and she delighted in their retreat. For there was no longer a place for them, in the world that moved forward. Mother Giselle and a select few remained behind, faces grim. 

As she watched them, she came upon a sight truly terrifying indeed. Gleaming blue eyes were warped by the distance into obsidian chips. A wide, toothed smile caught the flickering light of the chandeliers. 

Lingering in the shadows of the room, Leliana grinned at her. Eleine understood at last. 

Josephine organising the scuffle? No. Those were not her tactics. They were Leliana’s. Eleine tilted her head back to the vaulting ceiling, and let it see her own wicked smile. 

Played. They had both been played. 

For what reason, she did not yet know. But she would. 

And then there was that familiar clank of iron shoes against stone, and the guards returned, chests emblazoned with the mark of the Inquisition, and a battered Alexius between them. Quiet returned, and Eleine stepped back to her throne, eyes and core blazing. 

If it had been warm in the room before, there was now a sweltering heat. She could see her companions poisoned, being eaten from the inside out by crystals. She could see a world at the mercy of demons, Thedas in tatters for the pursuit of a single life. 

A life he had destroyed more than he had saved it. 

Stone braced her pulsing body, and she settled into the solidity of her throne. 

Alexius was dumped at the base of the stairs, a wretched creature. 

Of all the eyes in the room, it was Dorian’s dark ones she could not ignore. They were leeches upon her skin. Begging, hungry for what she was unwilling to give. 

“You recall Gereon Alexius of Tevinter,” Josephine’s cool voice scraped across her skin, and Eleine placed sharp eyes on the woman. The Antivan was still shaken, but had a hardness in her eyes. “Ferelden has given him to us as acknowledgement of your aid.” 

Yes, yes, she wanted to say, but held her tongue. “The formal charges are apostasy, attempted enslavement, and attempted assassination— on your own life, no less.” 

Really? Eleine had quite forgotten about that. “Tevinter has disowned and stripped him of his rank. You may judge the former Magister as you see fit.” 

Eleine refused to acknowledge the woman, and instead kept her eyes on Alexius. The man did not look up from his heap on the floor, but seemed content to breathe in the dust and dirt. “How does it feel to be amongst the worms, Alexius?” 

“I couldn’t save my son,” he spat into the ground, “do you think my fate matters to me?” 

“Will you offer nothing more in your defence?” Josephine asked, appalled. 

“You’ve won _nothing_ ,” Alexius spat, “the people you’ve saved, the acclaim you’ve gathered – you’ll lose it all in the storm to come.” The room burst into angry shouts and calls for blood. “Render your judgement, Inquisitor,” Alexius shouted over them, straining up to his elbows to look her in the eye. 

There was such a noise in her ears. Perhaps it was the roaring of her fire, certainly the flaming chandeliers seemed to think so, or perhaps it was the rush of blood through her veins. Words of vengeance, of dealing pain pressed against her lips, and she opened them to release it. Release the anger, the festering hurt. 

_You are my friend._

Her mouth clacked shut, and the stream of ash that was to pollute the air with her next words, wisped out her nose. 

She found Dorian. He was wilting beneath the fury in the room, squeezing himself back to the edge of the room. Shoulders drawn in tight, back hunched. His eyes cast to the ground.

How disgusting. 

“You swore to the mages you’d help them.” Whose voice was that, scraping across the room? A stranger’s words, a better woman’s words. “I will have you uphold that promise. Fiona will take charge of you.” It was her mouth moving, her vocal cords rubbing raw. For all her anger, all her hate, she could not stop herself. “Any knowledge, favour, or coin you own will go to the mages’ future.” The charge fell so foreign on Eleine’s ears. It rattled around her brain, several moments of horror at having said something she could never take back. 

Vengeance slipped through her fingers. 

The room was gutted, hollowed of sound. In her periphery, she could see Alexius slump before her, agonised words slipping from his lips. “A headsman would have been kinder.” 

But her eyes had never left Dorian. She watched his expression change. Falter, at first, disbelief slowing his understanding, till it was as though he was lit up inside, his eyes burning into her own. 

Stillness settled over her core. Perhaps it was really her, who had been gutted. 

She watched the guard’s hands clamp down around Alexius’ arms and haul the man to his feet. Each moment, he was pulled away from her retribution, dragged on like a year. Every step they took out of the hall she wanted to call out to them, have him brought back and eaten by her flame. 

But he was gone, out into the courtyard, beyond her reach. 

She fell like a bag of bones upon her throne. Flicking her fingers at Josephine, she called for Crestwood’s mayor to be fetched. Know the mercy of _heaven_ she had said. Not _her_ mercy. 

And yet it was done. 

They waited in cloying silence, the air thick and sticky. She was rattled to her core. And tired. So Maker damned tired. Thoughts of curling up beside Sven intruded upon her rallying hate towards the Mayor, and she grazed a nail over the stone arm rest. 

She hungered for that sound of approaching guards, now. 

In stilted quiet they suffered till the Mayor was thrown at her feet, grey hair in disarray above his head, body streaked with dirt, and deep bags beneath his eyes. 

“Mayor Gregory Dedrick of Crestwood is present for betraying his own constituents. He confesses that ten years ago, he flooded Old Crestwood to kill refugees and villagers touched by the Blight. The Mayor claims it was to spare the rest of Crestwood, but we only have his word.” Josephine’s speeches were for the audience’s benefit, she knew, but was irritated at them nonetheless. 

“I knew you were a rat the moment I saw you,” Eleine taunted, and Dedrick gave a low snort. He looked up at her, and she did not like the manic gleam in his eyes. 

“There’s no cure for the Blight,” he strained, “but I couldn’t convince anyone to leave a sick child or husband behind.” Mutters coalesced around the room, sweeping disapproval and hunger for blood. 

“So you herded the infected into one place and flooded Old Crestwood?” Josephine exclaimed, “were no innocents caught in the waters?” 

“Nearly everyone in the village had the Blight,” he yelled, “I swear it!” He lunged towards her, and the guards dragged him back by his ankles. Still he shouted, and she could feel the crowd pressing in, delighting in the spectacle. Filthy nobles. “Have mercy,” he pleaded, “I couldn’t tell the survivors I’d drowned their own families to save them. I— I couldn’t.” 

She looked into his eyes for a time, and tried to find herself in them. It wasn’t the same. His actions were bred from cowardice and weakness. Any tyranny she would commit would a product of her rotten desires. 

They weren’t the same, but they could be similar. 

Prison, or exile? He would rot in prison, wither away to something far less human. Perhaps he would deform into one of those bodies she had found beneath the dam’s waters. Exile would set him free to plague Thedas, simply outside of Ferelden. 

“You committed murder on Ferelden’s soil. Let them deal with your punishment. Send him to Denerim,” she called, “he can live the rest of his life behind their bars.” 

The crowd rallied their approval, and the Mayor’s thin exclamation went almost unheard. “In prison? Maker, I should have drowned with them.” 

“Yes,” she agreed, “you should have.” 

And then he was gone, and another was brought before her. Another, another. Prisoners of war, Templars and Apostates she enlisted to their work. Spies and Nobles who had committed crimes on their soil. Another, another, another. 

Petty disputes and requests were asked of her, entreaties for help in certain regions, behests for trade. 

“I believe that is the last,” Josephine concluded by her right, crossing something off on her clipboard. Eleine stood, withholding a wince at the stiffness of her muscles. 

“Return to your duties,” Eleine called to the courtyard, “and if you will excuse me, lords, ladies, companions.” She gave a sharp incline of her head, before catching Cullen’s gaze, and tilting her head towards the war room. He nodded, and began weaving through the dispersing crowd. 

“Join us, when you are able,” Eleine snapped at Josephine, “and bring Leliana.”

“Yes, Inquisitor.” Josephine could not lift her face to look at Eleine. Eleine swept passed her, escaping the confines of the hall into the opulence of Josephine’s office. 

Cullen, she could hear striding in after her.

A hand curled around her arm, and she froze. Eleine stared at the gloved digits, warm, large, circling her bicep with finger space to spare. Cullen’s eyes melted onto her own, and she wet her lips. 

“Inquisitor…” His voice, mellow, dripping honey, just as she had always known it to be. “About Sven— I… Congratulations,” he offered, small smile on his lips. 

He had not let go of her arm. His heat caressed her front, the scent of him coiling in her nose. The individual strands of fur on his mantle were clear enough to see, this close. His faces was inches from her own. When had it gotten there? So close. So close. 

Just a little closer. 

His grip loosened, and traced up ever so slightly. 

Eleine stepped back and those fingers fell from her arm. “Thank you, Cullen.” She gave him a thin smile. “it truly was close there.” She hoped he hadn’t heard her heart on her tongue at the word _close._

That hand came up to rub the back of his neck, and he looked about the room. There was such a heat in the space between them, and Eleine hoped it wasn’t showing on her cheeks. She could feel them searing. “It was. I see you also had new armour commissioned.” 

She blinked, looking down at herself. “Ah. Yes. I believe my Commander took care of that when she returned. And Vivienne,” she muttered the last. She forced herself to not fidget, cocking her hip and crossing her arms. 

“Commander?” Cullen queried, fastening his hands upon the hilt of his sword. 

“Commander Helaine,” she answered, tasting bile on her tongue. 

He sensed her distaste it seemed, perhaps it was plainly across her face, and he gave a low chuckle. “How was the training?” 

“Left much to be desired,” she rolled her eyes, and he laughed. 

“That is the case with most training, I believe.” He cocked his head towards the war room, and she nodded, following him. “When I was younger, as much as I wanted to be a Templar, I used to wish I could run back home sometimes.”

Eleine pushed the war room door open, and held it while Cullen sauntered in. She felt warmth pool in her stomach. “If Sven had had a home, he would have run.” 

Cullen quirked a brow. “No family?” 

“None.” Eleine wandered around the table, eyes on the multitude of rift marks lingering around the map. 

“Except you,” Cullen snuck in, and she gave him a stern look, to which he returned with a smile. “Your words this morning.” 

She shook her head, scooting her butt up onto the table and tilting her head at him. “Oh, Commander. Someone’s in a daring mood, today.” 

“Maker’s breath,” he shot back, “you are.” 

A laugh was startled out of her, and she crossed her arms, not at all unaware of how it highlighted her breasts. “And how do you feel about what I said this morning, Commander? I am not unaware that you are strongly Andrastian.” 

Cullen rubbed the back of his head, eyes slipping from her. “I… believe you made a very good decision.” 

The war room doors creaked open, and Leliana swept into the room, sharp smile still in place. “Indeed, you did.”

“What nonsense are you all spouting?” Josephine raged, storming into the room, “this will devastate our tentative alliance with the chantry—“

“Good,” Eleine spat. 

“ _What_ were you thinking, Inquisitor?” Josephine stressed. 

Eleine stood up from the table, and stared the woman down. “I was thinking that they must know their place.” Her words fell upon the room, strikes of steel and anger. “Herald of Andraste you may all have used me as.” She stalked around the table, each step towards Josephine driving the woman back. “But I am not your puppet. This is your doing, Josephine. You should have known I would make you pay for it.”

“I…” the woman faltered, leaning back as Eleine breathed on her face. “I never thought you would humiliate them.”

“Like you humiliated me?” Eleine taunted, and the woman’s eyes dropped to the ground. 

“Well,” Leliana delighted, “it was wonderfully entertaining to watch the Clerics stutter and spit in shock. You should have heard Sister Ivy when you twisted Andraste’s words. ‘They may cry out to their gods as they please’.” Leliana laughed at a joke none of them found any humour in. 

“You support this?” Josephine breathed.

“It is about time the other races are seen as equal in the Chantry, Josie. _But for every one who stood and sang the hymn of praise, Two lay at their feet, soul seeking the Light eternal_. This is not the Inquisition we want to be.” 

“We need more soldiers,” Cullen agreed, “and establishing the Inquisition as a place to save others, rather than destroy them for differing beliefs—“ he shook his head, “they’ll be flooding in.” 

Josephine sighed. “There will be consequences.” 

Eleine caught her eyes. “Yes, there will be.” Josephine lost some colour in her cheeks. 

“It is time for change, Josie,” Leliana insisted, “the Chantry cannot remain behind while the world moves ahead. We cannot fear them, now.” 

So she wanted this, then. Eleine sucked on her teeth. Never would she have guessed Leliana would be so disparaging towards her own institution. The woman was no fool, however. Of course, she would know the darkness in the Chantry better than most. 

“I cannot believe the Wardens are using blood magic,” Cullen spat, and Eleine’s head whipped over to him. 

“Yes,” she agreed, “for all their righteousness, they certainly slipped into despicable creatures.” 

His eyes bled into hers. “You have seen a blood mage?”

“This, ‘Circle Horror’, perhaps?” Leliana purred. 

Eleine crossed her arms. “As I told you before, I never came into any contact with Travon. But I am more than aware of those he killed.” 

Cullen shook his head, and squeezed the hilt of his sword. “How many years did it take for them to discover him?”

The air in Eleine’s lungs grew stale. “Many.” 

“We will not allow this ritual to go ahead,” Leliana vowed, “I requested you return sooner so that we may organise an assault on their forces pouring into the Western Approach.” 

“How long do we have?” Eleine wearied. 

“Two weeks.” Leliana leaned over the map. “You have duties to attend to here as well.” 

Eleine sighed, and made her way to the map herself, eyeing the stack of missives prepared for her. “Yes, indeed.” 

And so they worked for hours, till the moon rose, and she had to light sconces for them to see.

“I happened to hear an interesting rumour, Inquisitor,” Leliana purred eventually. Her eyes had that twinkle of humour in them, but Eleine could see what the others could not. There was a sharp gleam to them. There was no mirth to be found here. 

Eleine stood up straight, but cocked her hip. “Oh?”

Cullen and Josephine stood bickering off to their left about the alliance issues in Orlais. The words “a show of force” and “make a good impression” were thrown around with degrading barbs to each-others tactics. She had Leliana’s full attention. And she was entirely without an ally. 

“A few whispers say they saw the Comte Larryal slip into your quarters… and leave after some time.”

All sound seemed to be sucked out of the room. All heat too, though Eleine blamed that on the ice pouring through her veins. A part of her itched to see Cullen’s face, but it was quickly incinerated by her pride. 

Eleine let a slow smile curl her lips. “Hmm…” she hummed, “now that is a tasty rumour.” 

“I quite thought so, too,” Leliana remarked, her eyes dressing Eleine down.

“Well?” Josephine interrupted, “did he try anything untoward? We can have him removed immediately, Inquisitor – we know he’s been awfully forward—“

Eleine laughed. “Untoward? Depends on what kind of woman you are asking.”

“And what kind of woman are you, Inquisitor?” Leliana reclined against the war table, her body stiff with threats.

“Ah,” Eleine smirked, beginning to make her way to the door, “I am sure you already know the answer to that, dearest Spymaster.”

“And yet,” Leliana’s voice cut through the air, alerting the others to the true tension in the room, “I find myself confused.”

“Now now, we simply cannot have that, can we?” Eleine let her own malice shine through her toothed smile. 

Cullen cleared his throat. She felt something inside her scrunch up and fall to bits. Her smile slipped back to the hell from where it had come. “It would be no issue to have him sent back to Orlais, Inquisitor.”

She swallowed the shards of glass her words wanted to be. “Kind, truly, Commander. But everyone’s concern is entirely unfounded.”

“Oh?” Leliana echoed her. 

“Do you mean to say,” Josephine halted, “you… engaged with the Comte?”

Eleine rolled her eyes. Cullen did just love to dismantle all of her footing, didn’t he? If only that stupid man had not been here… maybe she could have lied enough to get out of this situation. _Well,_ Eleine inwardly snarked, _one must face their mistakes._

“ _Engaged_ gives it such a disgustingly Orlais ring.” Her back hit the solid wood of the door. “It was much more Fereldan.” 

Leliana’s eyes roved her body. “Need I remind you, _Inquisitor_ , that we discussed the consequences—“

“I am honestly shocked,” Eleine bit, her feet snapping her to the war table before she had the time to check them, “that you would dare interfere in my personal matters. I will say this only once,” her burning eyes swept over the occupants in the room, “I am my own master, capable of enough cognition to understand the consequences of my actions.”

She moved around the table in sharp movements. Leliana’s face loomed close. “And you will never, not ever, presume to check me about such matters again. You and Josephine have consistently overstepped your bounds. I will tell you one last time. My patience is limited. And you don’t want me to be difficult.”

With a snap of hair, she was stalking to the door, eyes resolutely forward. 

“Forgive me, Inquisitor,” Leliana said, her voice carrying real regret. Eleine paused at the door. “I know we ask much of you. It is not my place to regulate such matters. I only wish to understand.”

Eleine gave a half turn, her eyes tracking the remorse all over Leliana’s body. “You were never interested in the Comte before, what brought on such reckless behaviour now?”

Eleine gave a coy smile. Her eyes met Leliana’s. “What can I say? I’m weak for a _warm body._ ” 

The door thudding shut behind her was a slam against her chest. The pity in Leliana’s eyes a stab to her pride. The truth she had allowed to spill out of her gaze to pool in Leliana’s hands, a mistake she knew she’d pay for later. 

Moonlight cut through the hallway windows, and she passed through the pallid chunks with heavy feet. As she passed through Josephine’s warm office, and came face to face with Andraste, Eleine clenched her arms. 

Alone in the room, she spoke. “What is it like, to be used as a tool of my power?” 

There was no answer, just more agonised clawing. “Yes, indeed,” Eleine nodded. “I thought as much.”

She trudged through the hall, swinging hips abandoned to tend to the exhaustion burdening her limbs. Maker, what a day. 

Varric raised a hand as she passed him, and she gave him a weak smile. Solas’ rotunda was as impressive as the first few times she entered it. Frescos still in progress slashed in colour across the drab walls. 

A figure leaned against the wall behind Solas’ scaffolding. 

“You have made your decision,” Solas spoke from the shadowed corner.

She eyed his blurry outline, and shining eyes. “Now is not the time to lose your blunt tongue.” 

His eyes flashed. “The woman in the blood mirror.” 

Eleine’s insides crusted with ice. She turned to face him fully, fingers twitching for the staff she didn’t have. “Well, well. You’ve come out so far. No more lurking in the shadows, Solas.” 

He prowled around the wood towards her. Fur draped over his body, arms crossed and legs splayed, the lines of his face were carved stone. “You denied her purchase.” 

“She always has purchase,” Eleine spat, “she’s me.”

“No. She is what you fear becoming.” 

“A fool,” Eleine raged, advancing on him, “you have never been, so stop playing one.” She was in his face. “We both know she’s my anger, my pain. Everything twisted and rotted within me. I’ll never be rid of her. You should know better than trying to feed me lies as encouragement.” 

He studied her for a few hushed moments. “I have said it before, and I will say it again, Inquisitor. You have come too far to become such a creature. What you did today for Dorian, is proof enough.” 

Eleine stepped back. “What is it you want from this, Solas?” 

“I was wrong,” he replied, hands clasping behind his back, “altruism is in your nature. You only had to decide to allow it to make you vulnerable.” Her stomach roiled and revolted against the words, and she shook her head at him. Irritating man with his irritating interference.

She placed her back to him, and made her way up the stairs, steps a little heavier now. Must stuffed into her nose the moment she swayed into the library ring, and she thinned her lips. 

But there he was, head hung against a shelf, one arm holding him up. Eleine frowned. This was not what she had expected. What she had wanted. 

“Dorian.” The man jerked, and a book fell from the shelf his head had been planted against. It hit the floor by his feet, and splayed open, whitened pages flashing. 

“Eleine,” he murmured. “You… you gave him to the mages.” 

She worked over the tension gripping her throat. The emptiness in her head where there should be replies. 

“Why?” he snapped, voice harsh and loud. Eleine spared a glance around the room at the quiet patrons, their heads turned resolutely away, but ears no doubt primed. “Why, Eleine?” he pressed. 

Her hands clenched around her arms. “Because you didn’t want him to die.” 

Dorian’s face was raw, agonised before her, and she felt her breath die in her throat. “You wanted to kill him,” he broke. 

“Yes,” she agreed, “I still do.” 

“But you didn’t.” He took a step towards her. 

“No.” She looked away. “You didn’t want me to.” She did not know what else to say. 

His fingers reached out, slow, jerking. He squeezed her arm. “Thank you, Eleine,” he breathed, “thank you.” 

She gave him a slight pat on his muscled arm. “Well. Don’t drink too much in celebration.” 

He grinned at her. “That, my dear, I can never promise you.” 

She rolled her shoulders, and turned to retreat back down the stairs. “No tavern brawls with Bull.” 

“Again,” he called after her, and she pretended she could not hear the tears in his voice, “I offer you no promises.”

She swept passed Solas as though he was not there, pushing through to the hall. Eyes. Eyes, eyes, eyes. Eleine angled herself passed them all, giving a slight wave to Varric’s low: “Hey, Terror.” 

The stone ceiling gave way to a blanket of blinking stars and she breathed out a thin puff of ash. Labouring her way passed the milling occupants of Skyhold, Eleine hunched into the infirmary. 

Abel looked up from Sven, and flinched. Eleine cocked her hip, and raised a brow at him. 

The elf tugged on his tapered ear, struggled to say something, and then scurried passed her, out of the infirmary. 

“He’s fond of you,” Sven snarked from his bed, and Eleine placed him under a stern eye. 

“You must be feeling well today.” She unbuckled her chest plate, arm guards and scales down her legs, letting them fall with a clank to the ground. 

“Ready to get back out there,” Sven wheezed, shaking arm pointing at the training ground outside the window. 

“You will be our finest soldier,” she rolled her eyes, slipping out of her outer robe, “Sven of the Inquisition, the Sleeping Terror.” 

He gasped out a laugh. “Better than Circle Horror.”

She paused, fingers tight around the covers of his bed. “Yes,” she agreed, “now scoot over.”

“Can’t really move,” he halted, “not today.” 

Eleine ran a finger over his brow. “Ready, Sven?” 

He gave a small nod, and she grasped his shoulders, lifting him, gentle as she could, and placed him back down a little way over. She repeated the action with his legs, before unlacing her boots, and sitting down next to him. 

“Staying with me tonight?” he asked, with a tone that sounded more like a plea. 

“No,” she sniped, “I just wanted to move you over in the bed.”

“Thanks, Eleine.”

She sighed, and swung her legs up onto the bed. It was not exactly the amount of room she usually favoured, but his heat against her made up for it. Lying down beside him, they shifted for a few moments till they agreed on equal shares of comfort. Eleine rested her right arm over his chest, and her left beneath her head. Sven lay on his back, arms dead weights by his sides. 

“You shouldn’t sleep in that,” Sven breathed, and she pulled the covers over her a little more. 

“I will not be wearing it again tomorrow,” she grumbled, “so I will do as I please.” Casting her eyes to the ceiling, she wondered why she was the one being chastised. 

“I heard,” Sven forced out, and she felt a prick of pain that he did not have the strength to turn to look at her. 

She cupped his jaw, and tipped it to face her. “Heard what, silly boy?”

“Heard you…” his breathing grew shallow. “You said.”

“Yes, Sven?” she pressed, fear scraping under her skin. 

“Said I was your son,” he strained, and her mouth grew dry. 

“I’m sorry,” she broke, “I’m not your mother. I could never be a good mother.” 

She jerked as a hand, his hand, came to rest upon her fingers clenched in the sheets above his chest. “Never knew… a mother,” he panted and she shushed him, telling him to sleep. He was determined, it seemed, however, to say his piece. “But… I think,” he gave a low cough, “you’re like one.”

She was glad, so so glad, he could not open his eyes. He would never know the tears that traced over her nose, and fell, silent, upon the white sheets. She released her hold of the covers, and threaded her fingers through his instead. “You deserve a better mother, Sven. You have always deserved much better.” 

She hated to see his lips tremble, and tears slip from beneath his eyes. “I only want you,” he confessed, words a harsh sob. And just as he always did, he wrapped his fingers around her heart. Maker, they were the words of a deprived child. Heavy with neglect and deep seated longing. 

He had nothing to fear. The hand he held out for her now, begged her to take, she wanted and needed as much as he did. 

She rubbed away the tears with her thumb. “You have me, Sven,” she promised. “And I’ll never let you go like they did.” 

“Always?” he begged. 

“Always,” she insisted. She leaned over and kissed his forehead. “Now, sleep.” 

“Did you win your war?” Sven wearied. 

She soothed away the gathering of lines on his forehead. “Yes. For now.” She pulled the cover up to their chins, and listened to his breathing even out. She held him for many hours, before she too was lost to sleep. A sleep without the grinning face of Mirror Eleine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone interested in what parts of the Chant Eleine messed with, here are the original quotes! 
> 
> Blessed are the righteous, the lights in the shadow. 
> 
> But for every one who stood and sang the hymn of praise,  
> Two lay at their feet, soul seeking the Light eternal. 
> 
> Those who oppose thee  
> Shall know the wrath of heaven  
> Field and forest shall burn,  
> The seas shall rise and devour them,  
> The wind shall tear their nations  
> From the face of the earth,  
> Lightning shall rain down from the sky,  
> They shall cry out to their false gods,  
> And find silence. 
> 
> Let the blade pass through the flesh,  
> Let my blood touch the ground,  
> Let my cries touch their hearts. Let mine be the last sacrifice. 
> 
> And from among them voices raised  
> In threnody for Andraste wreathed in flame
> 
> She also calls Abel "valiant of heart" a term used early on within the Chant. 
> 
> <3


	20. Rapture

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly cannot thank you all enough for the support you've given me. Thank you for all the comments, especially those of you who have been commenting from the very beginning (Lastusernameonearth, sassyduck, TevinterLoyalist and Jrogers, that's you!). They really mean a lot to me, as do all the kudos, subscriptions and bookmarks! You're all so lovely xx
> 
> I have unfortunately, returned to uni, and this means my updates will be slower. But I promise if not twice a week, I aim for once a week. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy this chapter as much as I did writing it. My apologies that it's a bit longer than usual, it simply wanted to be a beast, and for the life of me, I couldn't stop it. 
> 
> All my love! <3

The next week slipped past her, a storm of meetings, judgements and training. She spent most of the time awake, catching a scant few hours of sleep here and there with Sven. And yet Eleine had not a single complaint. The boy was progressing with Art’s diligence and care, and as interested as she was in speaking to Abel about what woke him, the elf was adamant in avoiding her. 

Adan dropped snide comments every time he happened to be delivering potions for the infirmary while she was visiting. She had begun wondering if he was matching her schedule, trying to provoke her into acknowledging his presence. 

But she could not forget the sight of his face framed in a spinning blue vile. 

Most of her work required her presence around a certain handsome, delightful Commander. Cullen was far more charming than she had ever payed attention too, full of bubbling humour and wit. Not quite the acerbic edge of Dorian’s, but something far more gentle, soothing. She was not delusional, but there was a certain quality that shimmered in the air around them when they worked in close quarters. Eleine tried her best to keep her distance, but it was amusing to no end when he gave a small flinch of surprise at her proximity. She was beyond worries of him wanting her as she wanted him. She’d learned well enough there was no chance. 

Didn’t mean it wasn’t comical to watch him deflect her advances with jittering hands and averted eyes. 

It was rare a time they came to heated arguments over a point. “I cannot tell if he is combative or compliant,” she had remarked to Solas one day, after they had returned from training with Dorian. They both watched Cullen dressing down an impudent recruit in the courtyard. 

Solas had looked supremely amused. “I believe this is why isolation breeds ignorance.” Eleine had withheld the urge to pull his cheek, reminding herself this was Solas, not Sven nor Dorian. “It is because you are always combative, you do not know a person is usually both.”

She had made a point to insult his attire for the next few days as recompense for the comment. He bore it with a quirked brow and hands clasped behind his back. An unaffected stance she plotted to destroy. 

Occasionally Dorian would swing by to interrupt her duties, cheek written across his entire stature. A few swigs of his bottle he had acquired from she-didn’t-need-to-know-where, and he was a drunk mess at the foot of her bed, regaling her with tales of the Imperium and his pariah-hood. Sometimes he’d let something slip, an allusion to a tumultuous family situation, to filthy expectations embroidered in his daily existence there. 

In return, she would tell him of the glades around Trevelyan estate. Of a secret spot in the forest outside of Ostwick. Of blue eyes. In her weaker moments, she’d cave to one of his ambitious questions. 

“Do you remember the first person you killed?” 

Eleine had opened her fingers, one by one, from around the missive she had crushed. Torso half-hanging off the mattress, face upside down, Dorian goggled her from his sprawl atop her bed. The candle light played games across his face.

“Yes.” Eleine laid her head on her hands. “I do.”

“Do you regret it?”

“No.”

 

Finding Dorian and Cullen nestled amongst the garden’s stone pavilion, chess board between them, was the last thing she had expected. Ease and familiarity chimed in their every word, and the stream of friendly conversation tugged on her stomach. The herbalist she was speaking to quietened, looking back and forth between Eleine and the pavilion. 

Dorian was reclined in his usual easy stance, smile on his face and eyes light. It was Cullen, however, that her eye was most taken by. He leaned over the board, elbows crooked on his knees, hands threaded beneath his chin. Those amber eyes had his special sheen of a soldier, a strategist. A leader. 

The same one he had worn all week in their talks, except now it gleamed, delight sharp in the gaze. 

“Inquisitor?” the herbalist called to her from the clay planting pots. Eleine side stepped a chantry sister, who was swaying on the spot, hands clasped and eyes closed. Like all the idle occupants of the garden, she seemed caught up in the lush grass underfoot, the auburn trees framing the space, and the scent of flowers, sweet in their noses and on their tongues. 

“Gloat all you like,” Cullen chatted, “I have this one.” His hair was tousled by a gentle breeze, the curled strands separating and clustering in untempered abandon. 

Eleine stepped into the shade of the pavilion, still unseen, unheard. 

“Are you… _sassing_ me, Commander?” Dorian clucked, “I didn’t know you had it in you.” 

Cullen sighed, picking up a piece. “Why do I even—“ the piece dropped, slow, from startled fingers. She almost didn’t hear its clatter upon the board. Because those eyes were on hers now. And Maker, did she want to make something of the expression there. “Inquisitor.” Cullen made to stand, and Eleine entered the pavilion completely.

“Leaving, are you?” Dorian interjected, “does this mean I win?” Sparing a glance for him, she found his eyes were on her. Glittering with something that could only mean trouble. 

“Are you two playing nice?” Eleine crossed her arms, her shadow casting over Dorian. Cullen sat down again, and the slight scrape of a fingernail on wood caught in her ear. 

Dorian gave a slow smile. “I’m _always_ nice.” Then he turned from her, facing Cullen. “You need to come to terms with my inevitable victory,” he smirked, “you’ll feel much better.” 

“Really?” Oh, Maker, did Eleine enjoy that mellow rumble. “Because I just won.” Cullen placed his piece, and sprawled back on his chair, giving a low chuckle. “And I feel fine.” 

Dorian held up his hands in defeat. “Don’t get smug.” Those kohl lined eyes were on her now as he stood. “There will be no living with you.” 

“What are these?” Eleine leaned down and flicked Dorian’s knee guards. Polished silver, they cupped his knee, a snake coiling down his shin. 

“You could not be the only one to get upgraded, my dear.” Dorian squeezed her arm as he liked to do. “Where’s the justice in that?” 

“Not in your sense of fashion,” she returned, watching his retreating form. 

Dorian laughed. “ _You_ can hardly speak on the account of fashion.”

She clicked her tongue as he disappeared amongst the vines and flowers, once again left without the last word. 

“I should return to my duties as well,” Cullen bumbled, and she returned her eyes to his red clad form. “Unless…” those eyes darted up to her face, “you would care for a game?” His hand waved over the board.

He was criminal, this man. Eleine’s blood hummed, her limbs tingling. “Prepare the board, Commander.” 

He did, movements fast, as she sat down across from him. Practiced, sure, he arranged the pieces. “As a child I played this with my sister,” he smiled, “she would get this stuck-up grin whenever she won— which was _all_ the time.” Eleine could not remove her gaze from the laugh lines around his eyes. “My brother and I practiced for weeks.” His often-weary lips were smoothed out into an easy, nostalgic smile. “Oh, the look on her face the day I finally won…” And then his smile was gone. “Between serving the Templars and the Inquisition, I haven’t seen them in years. I wonder if she still plays.”

Eleine hungered for what that would be like. To have family, to care for them. Miss them and worry for them. A question of if she would be able to bear the sadness that lined Cullen’s face, rang in her chest, however. The thought of so much lost time with them seemed a weight upon his heart. 

“You have siblings?” She wanted to know more, needed to know more. 

“Two sisters and a brother.” Maker this was the happiest she had ever seen him. 

“Where are they now?” She moved a piece, but her eyes were on Cullen. She would not miss a second of that open joy on his face. However marred it was by the heaviness in his eyes, the chips of age on his face. 

“They moved to South Reach after the blight,” he replied, dropping his eyes to the board and weighing her move. “I do not write to them as often as I should.” He paused. “Ah, it’s my turn.” 

Eleine considered him. Was that truly his strategy? If he thought she would ever underestimate him, believe him distracted, he was pitifully misguided. Eleine never underestimated anyone. 

She gave him a slow, keen smirk. “You’re about to relive those childhood defeats. This game is mine.” And so, they played, and she lavished upon each moment, sitting in unholy joy. Eleine learned very quickly that he had a far sharper tongue than he usually let on, and he answered each of her snide barbs with one of his own. Their plays were equally as ambitious, though she was running a business on the side, and his were particularly bold. 

She certainly did not miss the way he leaned back in his chair, legs spread comfortably, after each of his moves. Eleine mourned the moments he dropped the stance, leaning forward to parry her plays. 

“This may be the longest we’ve gone without discussing the Inquisition— or related matters,” he commented at one point, bustling in his chair. She watched as his large shoulders bumbled along with the rest of his body, secret smile on her lips. Was the man entirely unaware of how attractive he was? 

Did he truly want to drive her insane?

“To be honest,” he looked up into her eyes, “I appreciate the distraction.” 

Maker, he did. 

She felt the tail of her control slip from between her fingers. Was that sweat on her palms, down her back? Surely, for the heat that pressed upon her skin, lighting her cheeks, could not be imagined. “We should spend more time together.” The words should never have been said, and they came in a rush. The layer she had peeled back with them, the vulnerability she had exposed, she could only pray he did not see. 

“I— I would like that,” he agreed, a small smile on his face. 

She looked away, back to the board as though she was weighing her next move. “Me too.” 

“You said that,” he breathed, and she felt embarrassment striking heat into her cheeks. Eleine scrabbled for control, for a mask she had long ago abandoned. In her inability to fill the stilted, stuffed silence, Cullen sought a solution of his own. “We should… finish our game. Right. My turn.” From the corner of her eye, she could see this tilting, happy smile on his face, but for everything in her, she had not the courage to look up and see it properly. 

Tension eased during the rest of their game, but once that thrill of something else was present in the air, there was no going back. There was no unseeing what was seen. No unsaying what was said. 

Cullen placed his piece with far more vigour than all the others, and leaned back in his chair, arm propped up, chest on full display, smirk on his lips. “Well. I believe the game is mine.”

She wondered what his chest would look like, beneath all that metal plating. What the heat of his skin would do to her as she traced bare fingertips over it. Her mind jarred. The board lay set before her, finished. “Wait, what?” 

Cullen crossed his arms, triumph a smug painting across his face. “Dorian cheats at this as well.” His little chuckle titillated in her ears. 

She sucked on her teeth. Well, that bloody Vint did like to ruin good things, didn’t he? She sniffed. “I have to say, Commander, that is the first time I have lost.”

Cullen leaned forward, brow raised. “Is that so?”

Eleine shook her head. “It used to drive Harper _wild_. She believed I was cheating, but never had the proof.” 

“Harper?” Cullen asked, lounging on his chair, head held up by a closed fist. 

She paused. “An… acquaintance from the circle.” 

“I have never…” Cullen halted, eyes averted, “heard you speak of anyone from the circle before— Sven, of course, aside.” 

Yes, indeed. Eleine’s eyes traced the nearby flirtatious patterns of wind tousled leaves. “There was never really anyone to speak of.”

Cullen’s sat up a little straighter. “No… friends?” 

_In haste, before the Mages came out into the small courtyard, the Templar’s had tossed a tattered blanket over the body. But Eleine had seen._

_From where she stood, it almost looked like those steel boots were stamping down upon the supine form. Three fingers poked out from beneath the stained fabric, crunched, desiccated. Katria’s Templar emblazoned body loomed over Anabelle’s corpse._

_And Eleine saw her smile, too. She saw, and she felt her fire burst, a bubbling hate quickening through her veins._

_But they had not seen her. They never knew the little shadow by the corner was a girl with a twisted heart, and hungry power._

“Eleine.” 

Her vision was consumed with the sight of gloved fingers around her own. Warm, bracing. And then there was his face too, brow heavy, eyes storming. 

“I had one friend,” she heard herself say, “when I was a child.” He said nothing, but those eyes were as ever present on her skin as that hand. “She was killed.” 

“The ‘Circle Horror’?” Such a dangerous voice, a growl, a threat. Not for the first time, Eleine wondered at what creatures he had seen mages become. 

“No, Cullen.” Would he understand? Could he ever believe the truth? 

That hand was pulled back, and his face, so close without her noticing, withdrew as well. “Templars?” he breathed, and she could hear the currents of pain and disbelief raging beneath the question. To any other, she would have her mouth opened by now, a stream of obscenities and curses against the order a pool at their feet. But this was Cullen, and she could not say a word. He hung his head. “Eleine I—”

“You would do yourself a great injustice,” Eleine snapped, “to apologise here.” Wide eyes were on her own. “I have never, not since the moment I met you, believed you to be like those that infested Ostwick. Do not apologise as though you stand beside them.” 

And that heat was back. The swirling mass of _something_ around them. In their eyes which could not look away, in her heart that pounded. 

“Were they brought to justice?” Cullen rumbled. 

She shifted around the queasy feeling in her stomach. “Yes.” 

“Inquisitor.” Eleine looked around at the harrier messenger running up to her. “There have been complications with the prison scaffolding. Josephine needs you to look over the budget for new materials.” 

She took the missive from him, scanning the report on the collapse. Eleine sighed. “Forgive me, Commander. I’m afraid our fun is over for today.” 

“I have much to be attending to, as well,” he agreed. 

She looked up from the cursive words to place him under a stern eye. “I expect to see the candles out in your office by midnight tonight.” He opened his mouth to argue, and she cut him off. “You work too hard, Cullen. Get your rest.” 

He stood, warm smile on his lips. “You work just as hard, Inquisitor. Harder, even.” 

She tore her eyes from the scar on his lips under the pretence of finishing reading. “Sweet,” she supplied, “but I know false flattery when I hear it.”

He was still, watching her. She grew hot beneath his gaze, and lest she misunderstand, she kept her head down. She did not want to confuse the look in his eyes. Tell herself it was something it could never be. “Even when…” Eleine looked up. His eyes were lost among the herbs and flowers. “Even when you were faced with closing the breach and helping the establishment of the Inquisition—” those eyes swept back to her still form, “you still took the time to ensure I was resting. Again, after you became Inquisitor, amidst everything, you found me a place for an office.”

Andraste’s plaideweave knickers. 

“I have seen you care for Sven all throughout this week and greet each new refugee that came in.” He needed to stop. Stop before she closed that distance that yawned between them. The ravine of responsibilities and fear she had carved with her own hands, was the only thing protecting him from what she was. 

He deserved so much better. 

“You are…” he looked away from her, “an admirable woman, Eleine.” 

She clenched her fingers that had grown lax around the missive. It had almost fluttered to the floor. Eleine had almost let it. 

“I… I appreciate that you think of me that way, Commander.” She turned from him, and took her first few steps out of the pavilion. She paused, and looked back. “But I believe out of the both of us, you are far more commendable. Get your rest, Commander.” 

Cool air curled around her face as she swept back within the hall, and she placed the back of her hand against her burning cheeks. She was distracted for the rest of the day, consumed with raptures in the form of a handsome face and blonde hair. 

Before she realised, night had fallen, and she had only to deliver the last of the mobilisation plans to Cullen and the Crestwood situation would be over, along with her work. Eleine buzzed every step to his office, breath a little shallower and faster the closer she drew to it. She took the route through Solas’ rotunda, as she always did, preferring avoiding the eyes of her people. 

She was not met with warm tawny eyes upon opening the door. 

Eleine sighed, eyeing the slumping Commander in his chair, desk looming closer and closer to his face by the second. 

The aroma of burning candles and books and warmth curled in her nose as it did every time she entered his office. He had not noticed she was here. She could see his fatigue, an oppressive mass pressing down on his back, and yet his hand scratched away, jerky, scrawling. But still working. 

Eleine stepped towards him over his stone floor, mind empty of the words she needed to say. Instead, she came to a stop by his side, clasped the top of his quill, and pulled it from his fingers. 

Slowly, his form arched up to look over at her. His pupils dilated. “Eleine…” such a quiet whisper, a breath. His face was a tale of pain and exhaustion. 

“To bed,” she murmured, “now, Cullen.” 

His brow furrowed. “I must—”

He silenced at her thumb on his forehead. “Now, Commander.” She gave the smallest, merest rub at the lines meeting between his eyes. 

He nodded, and waited, but she refused to leave. He trembled to his feet, and she averted her eyes, allowing him the moment of vulnerability without judgement. “Thank you… Eleine.” He brushed past her, all heat and muscle. Eleine curved her arms around herself, bracing against that spike of need in her. She watched him labour to his ladder, send her an indiscernible look, before climbing up into his loft. 

Alone in his office, with him undressing above her, was almost too much to bear. Had she not seen the tormented expression of his eyes, she’d have joined him. Instead, she considered the scatter of papers and books across his desk. As jumbled as his mind, it seemed. 

Eleine treaded over to his door, steps louder than usual, and clicked it shut with exaggeration. She heard Cullen sit down on his bed above her, and she stilled. She waited, and waited, till she could hear even breathing, and the gentle mutterings of a person asleep. 

Eleine hunkered down, and crept along his floor, back to his desk. Easing herself up onto his chair, freezing at every snuffle and turn of Cullen, she surveyed the mess. Quill in hand, Eleine began to work. 

Missive after missive she responded to, orders and commands and directions flowing from the tip of the quill. Maker, he was responsible for a lot. Supplies, and people and places. She finished his strategy rehearsals, lettering page after page with all the possible mobilisations against Corypheus— something he had been attempting to achieve all week. The multitude of books on his desk were her references, alongside her ample knowledge of killing and avoiding death, of course. Soon, she could see the wood beneath the parchment, and she organised what was left for him in the morning. There were some things she simply could not do, things she outside of her experience, her knowledge. 

The corner of another missive poked out of the volume _Of Mortality and Command_ , and Eleine sighed, yanking it out. 

_"Dear Mia, I'm still alive. Your loving brother, Cullen."_

_Honestly, is it so difficult? We thought you were dead. Again. If the Inquisition was not on everyone's lips, we would never have heard that their fine commander survived Haven._

_We've been hearing strange things about the Templars lately. I am not sorry you left them. I thought your resignation was implied when you joined the Inquisition, but you meant something more, didn't you?_

_It's a fool's errand asking you to stay safe, but please try._

_Your loving sister, (see how easy this is?)_

_Mia._

Eleine tucked it back in the book, and slipped off his chair, creeping her way back to his door. Heart thumping in her throat, sweat above her lip, Eleine twisted the handle, and shot outside. 

A wall of cool air slammed into her, and she leaned against his closed door, taking a few gulping breaths of air. Shaking, unsure, she pushed to her feet, hurrying through Solas’ abandoned rotunda and into the throne room. Empty of its usual occupants, the chantry heraldry loomed at her. Glistening gold and agonised clawing. She passed by Andraste without a glance. 

Art popped out of her door, and Eleine raised a brow. “He in there?” 

“’Quisitor,” he startled, “aye, ‘Ven’s a sleepin’ ‘ere now.” 

Eleine patted his shoulder. “My thanks, Art. Get yourself to bed.” 

“Aye, Your Worship.” He clapped a closed fist to his chest, and scuttled off out of the hall. 

Eleine wearied up to her room, unbuttoning her dress shirt. The fire was on in her room, heating it to the exact temperature she loved. The writhing flames cast the room into terrible shades of orange, and she sought out the pallid face she knew would be most warped by it. 

Sven slept, quiet and untroubled, beneath her many covers and amongst her many pillows. Art had surrounded him, propped each of his arms up with pillows of their own, supported his back with many more. 

Spoiled, the boy was utterly spoiled. 

She moved as quietly as she could to her dresser, removing the rest of her attire, and replacing it with a nightgown Josephine had commission for her. Dressed, her eyes caught sight of her balcony. 

The mountains reared, shards of snow-capped obsidian, into the darkened sky. Mellow blue began to melt into black, flecked with the bright pricks of stars. Eleine drifted to her balcony and rested her thinly clothed hip against the stone of her railing. A chilled wind curved around her like lover’s arms. The stark landscape disappeared into the night, and the glow from her fire warmed the world around her into hues of auburn. Her hands came up to rub her arms. 

“Eleine?” Sven called from her bed, and she looked back at him. 

“Yes?” she returned, padding back to his side. 

“Why am I here?” he mumbled, lead lids raising for moments at a time to look about her room. 

“There was a Red Templar attack on one of our camps in Crestwood,” she murmured, sitting beside him on the bed. “The injured soldiers needed the space in the infirmary.”

“’Nd I don’t have a room,” he finished. 

She brushed her fingers along his forehead. “Not yet. Tomorrow.”

He wheezed. “Can I choose it?” 

She rolled her eyes. “Perhaps. If you don’t collapse after your exercises like today.”

Sven frowned and coloured. “I won’t.”

Eleine settled in beside him, above the covers but comfortable. “Sleep.” 

 

She woke to a messenger at her door. Wrenching the door open, away from the brittle hand pounding against it, Eleine shoved her face close to the man’s. “What?”

He cowered, stumbling back, and tucking his head in. “F-forgive me, but Leliana has requested your— your presence in the throne room ri-right away.”

She looked down at him. “One or two knocks is sufficient, next time.”

“My… my apologies, Your Worship!” He thrust a missive into her hand, and scuttled off, down her stairs, out into the hall. 

“Sounded like he was knocking to a tune,” Sven mumbled from her bed, and she crested her stairs to find him sitting up, swollen eyes looking around her room. “Nice room,” he muttered. 

“I have to go,” Eleine replied, making her way to her dresser, “but I will send for Art.” There was no response for several long moments, and Eleine looked over to find Sven hunched in on himself. “What happened?”

He looked over at her, bottom lip slightly pouting. “He always has to take care of me, Eleine.” 

She finished buckling her belt over the red dress shirt, and gave him a stern look. “He loves taking care of you.”

Sven looked away. “Why?”

Eleine watched him fiddle with the red covers for a few moments. “Because you’re important to him.”

Sven fidgeted. “Why?” 

Eleine sighed, and walked over to him, placing her hand atop his stubbly head. “Ask him, you silly boy.” He gave a weak nod in reply, and she sighed again. “I have to go.” Another nod. “I’ll be back.” Another nod. “Oh, Sven. What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing,” he muttered, “you can go.” 

She sucked on her teeth, ducking into her bathing chamber to fix her face and hair. “How about hot cakes for breakfast?” She popped back into her room. 

His head snapped up, eyes wide. “Really?”

She flicked his forehead. “Ask Art.” 

Sven pouted. “But, Eleine…”

Eleine shook her head, and hurried to her door. “Have to go.” Outside her door, she gave a slight yawn, and opened her missive. 

_Thank you, Eleine._

She traced the strokes of Cullen’s writing, feeling her heart quickening. She folded it, and slipped it into the pocket of her pants, safe. 

Leliana accosted her the moment she stepped into the throne room. The woman pointed a finger at a laughing lord by one of the feast tables. “Lord Briar, a very wealthy man, has joined the Inquisition today. He must be shown the utmost favour.” 

Eleine sighed. “And where is our fine ambassador?”

Leliana gave a sharp smile. “Why, entertaining his children, of course.”

“Of course,” Eleine echoed. “Oh,” she caught herself, “send for Art to attend to Sven, in my room.” Leliana dipped her head in acquiescence. Side stepping the woman, Eleine prowled towards the bearded man. Lord Briar. There was an openness to his face. Ferelden was embroidered all over him, in his fur clothes, on his rugged face, chin and nose. He was not so handsome as Cullen, however.

“Lord Briar,” she greeted, interrupting whatever conversation he had going with two Orlesian nobles. They gave her scalding looks, before slinking off elsewhere. 

“Ah, but the heavens have blessed me!” he boomed, “The Inquisitor herself! It is an honour to meet you at last.” The man smiled, and Eleine found she appreciated the happy gleam in his eyes. 

She returned his smile. “The honour is mine, Lord. You are a very brave man, to ally yourself with us.”

“Ah,” he rumbled in chuckles, “the heretics above the mountains— yes, perhaps you are right. But I find myself far more interested in the fact that you alone brought peace to the Hinterlands, the Storm Coast, and now, Crestwood.” 

Eleine lowered her head in an only partly insincere form of gratitude. “How lucky are we,” she charmed, “that a man with such a supple tongue will now move it for our benefit.”

Lord Briar laughed, resounding booms, and patted his chest. “My! You are a wonder.”

Eleine found herself smiling a little wider at his genuine mirth. A girl – woman? – shuffled up to them, her great skirts not enough to cover up her hesitant legs. Eleine cocked a hip, and watched in bemusement as the girl tugged on Lord Briar’s arm, eyes resolutely skittering away from Eleine. 

Lord Briar looked down at her, and gave a wide grin. “Ah, Inquisitor,” he grabbed the girl by the shoulders, and placed her before him, “this is my daughter, Mirrielle.” Ah. She must have run away from the boredom of Josephine’s false smiles and greetings. 

Lady Mirrielle gave a shaky dip at the waist, and Eleine was amused as she tangled herself up in her lilac dress. Her cheeks were red when she returned upright, her shoulders drawn in. 

“You are most welcome in Skyhold,” Eleine assured the girl, “you may come to me if you ever have any concerns. Or,” she added, “if you cannot find me, feel free to send a messenger. I will attend to you when I am able.”

The girl opened her mouth, could not find the words to respond, turned bright red, and closed it again. Her father gave a slight shake of his head behind Mirrielle, and Eleine sighed. 

She warred with herself. 

Holding out her arm, she motioned to the night draped courtyard outside. “Join me, Lady Mirrielle.” 

The girl’s head snapped up, blond ringlets bouncing. She looked caught between petrified and ecstatic. Eleine held back a snort with all of her will power. 

Tenderly, almost like she were half afraid Eleine’s arm would turn into a snake and bite her, Mirrielle placed her hand above Eleine’s. Lord Briar was beaming, and mouthed a thank you to Eleine. 

She smiled in return, and began leading the girl out of the hall. “How have you liked Skyhold so far?” she asked, pitching her voice in the most amiable tone she possessed. 

“Oh,” Mirrielle startled, “it is quite— I have never been… It’s—”

Eleine laughed, and as they stepped out of the hall, held up her free hand to ward of the lowering sun. “You will not injure me no matter what you have to say,” Eleine promised, “I come from as noble birth as you.” 

Mirrielle’s cheeks were two red suns. “It _is_ quite lovely,” she murmured. 

“The mountains are a sight,” Eleine agreed, and they craned their heads to look at the snow-capped titans. “But a little less dust and a little more light would do us no harm, I’m sure.” 

Lady Mirrielle giggled, her free hand covering up the sight. Eleine gave an easy smile in return, angling them towards the right of the courtyard. Grunts and groans of the training recruits called her attention, and she paused them atop the stair platform to watch. 

Mirrielle gave a small, “Oh.” Eleine looked at her from the corner of her eye, and traced the path the girl’s followed. 

Oh, indeed. 

Cullen’s bare chest glistened with sweat, and rippled with each sharp swing of his sword and shield. If she had the will to do so, she would search for his mantle and undershirt, curious where he had dumped them. Not to acquisition them for herself, of course. Just for a look. 

But there was no taking her eyes off his form, exposed for whatever reason. Whatever _Maker sent_ reason. 

“He’s marvellous,” Mirrielle whispered, and Eleine gave a distant nod of her head. 

And then caught herself. She gave a small cough, and tugged on Mirrielle’s arm. The lady, too, seemed to snap out of it, and coloured more than Eleine had already seen her. 

“That is Cullen Rutherford, Commander of the Inquisitions forces, among other things,” Eleine introduced, keeping her eyes just above his body lest she grow distracted again. 

“Oh,” Mirrielle exclaimed, her fingers pressing against her lips. “He… He—”

Eleine nodded, ignoring the flushes of heat through her body. “Perhaps we should move on,” she suggested. 

“Yes,” Lady Mirrielle flustered, “we should.” 

Move on? There was no moving on, for Eleine. Not now. Not after _that_. 

She understood now. Why she was so attracted to him. What kept her turning her head to see him. She would never forget the sight of those scars pearling across his back and chest.

He was just like her. Damaged, a victim to the other’s people. 

She had been at the mercy of Templars, and he had been at the mercy of mages. 

He was the other side of the same coin. She saw in his eyes what lay in her own.

Cullen adjusted a young recruit’s hold on his sword. But more. So much more. 

Amber eyes met hers from across the courtyard. 

Cullen smiled, and she returned it. Weaker, pained. He was too good for her. 

Her heart pounded.

She wanted him. 

 

Dorian dropped his book in surprise as she whipped into his alcove of the library, yanking on his arm. “Maker— Eleine!” he snapped. 

She jittered in front of him. “I do not know what to do.” 

Dorian rose a brow, picked up his book with sanctimonious fingers, and stood before her. “Oh? And this warrants an attack in the library?”

“Cullen.” She crossed and uncrossed her arms. 

“Ah.” He smiled, leaning against a bookcase and crossing his arms. “Watching you dance around one another all week has been charming, but—“

Eleine snatched at the skin of his cheek, and pulled. “What nonsense are you burdening me with now?” she asked. 

“Rough around the edges all you Southerners may be,” Dorian spluttered, slicking back his hair and rubbing his cheek, “but surely you are not so blind as to have missed it?” 

She fidgeted. “There are… moments,” Eleine halted, and Dorian’s face slashed into a grin. 

“Oh, _moments_ , you say” he lilted, “and what are these _moments_ like.” 

“Hot,” she sniped, drawing a startled laugh out of Dorian. 

“And you think they’re all in your head, do you?” 

Eleine looked away. The library moseyed about around them, unaware and distant. She heard Dorian sigh, and he gave her his usual arm squeeze. “You once laughed at me,” Dorian began, “when I was unable to tell that Sven was…” Eleine sent him a look, and he quirked a smile. “I know what I have been seeing, Eleine. And I think you do too.” 

Dorian had not released her arm, and the hold grew suffocating. The man studied her, and let go. He sighed again. “I am a repository of secrets, remember?” The unsaid words stung in the air around them. _What is the real problem?_

She had always had such a strong grip over her heart, and since the death of Anabelle it had changed to a leash of extraordinary capability.

So she could not fathom, could not even begin to comprehend, why no matter the words she spoke to herself, the scenes she replayed in her mind over and over, she still cared for Cullen.

He was unlike anyone else she had ever met.

Kind, warm, with no ulterior motive behind his actions. 

She may be able to force her body away, but she despaired that for once, her heart would go where it pleased. 

Eleine looked up at his eyes. “I don’t want him how I… wanted all the others.” 

Dorian’s eyes swung to the ceiling, and they swam in silence for a few moments. “I am not… you know me as I am, Inquisitor,” he breathed, “I am a pariah. Unaccepted by my peers, my country-men… my family. Perhaps I am not—“ he broke off at the hand around his arm. She squeezed, like he did for her. Dorian smiled. “I cannot read others as well as a man like Varric perhaps could, my dear. But I believe you could never have Cullen any other way than how you want him now.” 

She gave a slow nod and he pulled her fingers off his arm, lacing them with his own for a moment. “There is no other choice for you, my dear.” He let her go. “You can only try.”

“Perhaps you should acquisition some of that wine of yours,” Eleine muttered, and Dorian chuckled. 

“Yes, yes, Eleine. Now go.” 

She did. 

“Inquisitor.” Tamoren caught her arm before she had taken her first step down the stairs. Eleine huffed in surprise. “Sorry.” He let her go.

“Yes, Tamoren? Something urgent?” Eleine followed him into a quieter corner of the library. Dorian raised a brow as she past. She gave an irritated jerk of her head. 

Tamoren looked to the ceiling, taking a breath. Not for the first time, she considered consigning him to Leliana’s inspections. She held herself back this time, as she had every time before. Only because she saw the way he looked at her. 

Besides, who was she to say others couldn’t have secrets?

“When I was in Redcliffe, I happened to meet two young men— twins. Mages. Exceptionally powerful.” Eleine sucked on her teeth. Tamoren watched her, expectation plastered so plainly on his face. 

“And you think they will join the Inquisition?”

“If you ask them, I am certain of it.”

She walked closer to him, eyes searing into his face. “Is that so?” 

He gave a wobbling smile. “They are very religious.” 

She stepped back. “Ah.” 

“I would not mention it,” he faltered, “except I heard you are travelling into the Western Approach— and they… they told me they were heading there.”

Eleine sighed, and turned to leave. “Yes, yes, Tamoren. If I find them, I will offer it to them.”

“Thank you, Eleine,” he called to her retreating back. 

“Do enjoy yourself, my dear,” Dorian charmed to her as she breezed past him. 

Each step she took towards his office lasted for an hour. Wars raged along her skin, goose bumps prickling across her arms and down her legs. She passed through Solas’ rotunda with a slight wave in return to his quiet: “Inquisitor.”

She walked the ramparts through the fading light, ignoring the chill that turned her sweat cold against her skin. Hues of red and pink cast the world into soft edges and hazy outlines. The wood of his door stared back at her. 

Her shaking hand clasped the cool metal handle, and turned. 

Those eyes looked up from his desk, and he jerked to his feet. Candle light cast shadows about the stone walls and floor, and she focused on that, trying not to lose herself in the thud of her heart. 

“Inquisitor…” Did he know it, too? The energy in the room, the sear of heat between them? 

He came out from around his desk, and she found she could not say a word. 

Cullen bumbled through his greetings, hands awkward, moving back and forth before finally resting on the hilt of his sword. Eleine truly couldn’t stop the smile that twitched at her lips. She watched, quiet, as apologies about the state of his office tumbled from those lips. His eyes darted around, meeting her gaze for only a few moments at a time before growing interested in something else entirely. She watched, and saw at last what she hadn’t managed to before. 

These moments. All of them – every single one. She wanted them to be hers. His care, his eyes… his sure hands that held so much responsibility. It was a need that held onto her throat, crept up and down her spine. 

It was a want, drawing her steps closer. 

Cullen’s voice had died at some point, though Eleine couldn’t remember when. His eyes finally stuck to her, their beautiful, liquid amber watching her approach. She didn’t try to scrutinise the emotion there. She could barely trust her judgement now.

She could smell his scent, warm, spiced. Her heart thundered in her chest. She was so close now, close, close. A foot away now, far too close to explain it away as anything but an advance. He watched her. She wondered if he was breathing, and realised soon that she wasn’t. 

His heat caressed her front now. They were thumbs distance apart.

His hands came up, wrapping strong fingers around her arms. She had only a second to breathe before his face was dipping to hers, eyes closing. Her heart in her throat, Eleine leaned forwards.

“Commander.”

Cullen reared back.

“You wanted a copy of sister Leliana’s report.”

The cold shocked her first. The distance between them left a vacuum of cool air. 

“What?” Cullen snapped. Eleine teetered where she stood, no longer seeing though her eyes were open. Pain bloomed in her chest; _Just what had she been doing _? Making advances on a man who had clearly turned her down multiple times before? _What had he been doing?_ Going to kiss her? To what end? Daunted and queasy, Eleine backed away, almost bumping into the messenger who had timely interrupted them. __

__“Sister Leliana’s report,” the messenger repeated, slow with confusion, “you wanted it delivered – without delay.”_ _

__Eleine did not look at Cullen. A silence lay heavy on the room. She could feel the messenger look between them._ _

__“To… your office? Right, I’ll just leave it here.” The messenger awkwardly placed the report on Cullen’s desk, shrivelling under his stare, before slinking out of the room._ _

__Eleine envied him. Now to make her own escape. Dignity clearly _not_ intact. _ _

__She cleared her throat. It was her turn to avoid eye contact. “Well… I see you need to—“_ _

__Hands in her hair._ _

__Thumbs on her cheeks._ _

__A chest against hers, furred cloak tickling her neck._ _

__Lips._ _

__Lips on her own lips._ _

__Moving. Caressing, stroking. Loving. Her hand fisted on his back, clutching him to her. Pulling him closer, closer. Mouth opening beneath his. Taking more, demanding more._ _

__Needing more._ _

__Receiving more. Tongue tying with tongue, breath meeting breath, want matching want. The thought that they should stop drove them closer, moving against and with each other in furious desperation. Pure ecstasy escaped her mouth in a moan, and was met with his own harsh rumble. His fingers gripped her chin, leading her face back to his lips, again and again. She could feel his heart pounding against her chest – or was that hers? There was so much heat, sticky, charged, between them. She wound her arms around his neck, trapping him against her. His arms coiled around her waist in return, and she was caged in his embrace. Their pants between kisses bounced around the room, their eager grunts and moans joining the lusty melody._ _

__Then he was gone, drawing back from her needy mouth, to gasp before her. Her hands trailed down his arms as he stepped back, and fell, useless to her sides. His eyes, those wonderful eyes, looking down bashfully, before meeting her own with that quiet confidence of his._ _

__“I’m sorry,” he said, voice low, rumbling. Her heart crushed to a stop. Here it was. His rejection. All over again. Every time. And just when she’d had a taste, just when—_ _

__“That was— um… really nice.”__

____

Her heart stuttered, entirely unsure whether it was supposed to be dead or alive. A quick breath in. Warmth flushed on her cheeks, a tingle of tears in her eyes. 

___  
_ __She had the most beautiful, wonderful man in the world looking at her like she was just as wonderful. He was clearly deluded._ _

__“I believe,” she purred, a smile warming her cheeks, “that was a kiss. But, I can’t be sure. It’s all a blur.” _Oh, Maker, was that a kiss_. Cullen’s laugh was honey, sweet on her tongue, delicious against her skin. _ _

__“Yes,” he said, moving towards her again, “well.” Then his lips were back, and this time she was ready. This time she met him half way. His hesitancy tasted as sweet on her tongue as she had imagined it would. He was calmer this time. Perhaps less afraid of her turning tail and running – or worse, cutting him for his advances. The thought almost made her laugh into their kiss. Not bloody likely. She’d only spent the last few months of their acquaintance aching for him. Slower, sweeter, they pressed against each other. She delighted in his hands running through her hair, fingers strong at the base of her head. She held the front of his mantle, clinging with every ounce of need within her._ _

__Not enough._ _

__She rolled her hips in closer to him, her body hungry for as much as she could get. A surprised moan from him had her wrapped around his fingers in seconds. She wondered when she had twined her arms around his neck, yanking him down to her height. Pulling, pulling. He had lit a fire in her now, and she was out of control. She was pushing up to her toes, breasts shoving flush against his chest. His hands dropped to her hips in moments. His left hand slipped to her lower back, pulling her against him, tighter, tighter. His right stroked the curve of her body in slow, heavy movements._ _

__Maker, she needed him. She had him._ _

__Maker, _she had him_._ _

__Eleine came undone before him._ _

__They pulled back for a moment to breathe, foreheads pressed together, and she gathered enough sense through her pounding lust to step back. The last thing she wanted was for him to think she only wanted him physically. Considering that was how she had thrown herself at him before, she would be unsurprised if he thought so._ _

__She looked at him, opening her mouth to speak, and she felt herself soak through her panties. His plump lips were glistening, open with panting gasps. His eyes almost black with want. His coat shoved off one shoulder. She could wrap her fingers around that buckle and pull – yes, pull and watch him fall before her, bare at last. She could fall to her knees, hands sliding up those muscled thighs, mouth opening—_ _

__Eleine clutched her arms, holding herself still, fighting every urge within her. She wanted him, wanted him so bad._ _

__But she needed him – needed him to want her other ways too._ _

__“Cullen, I—“ she gasped, “I care for you.” Cullen seemed to be pulling himself together, eyes never leaving her face. His hand jumped to his chest, but he reeled it back in. Fantasy told her he had been reaching for her, to yank her to his front in happiness. Logic told her he very well may turn her down yet. Fantasy led her to her next words. “You left the Templars, but do you trust mages? Could you think of me as anything more? Even a woman such as myself?”_ _

__“I could,” he marvelled, “I mean, I— I do think of you. And what I might say in this sort of situation.” His hand came up to run through his hair, his eyes leaving hers for only a moment._ _

__Her heart released the tight hold it had on her breathing. Happiness unspooled in her stomach. “What’s stopping you?” she breathed, shaky and ragged. Her hands dropped from her arms._ _

__“You’re the Inquisitor,” he began, “we’re at war and you—” he looked at her, hands gesturing up and down her body in desperate flourishes. “I…” he sighed, “I didn’t think it was possible.”_ _

__She cocked her hip, finding his desk close enough to lean on. “And yet I’m still here.”_ _

__He paused, eyes boring into her own with an intensity that set her fingers itching for his skin. “So you are,” he rumbled, “It seems too much to ask…” He drew in close to her, hand coming up to cup her cheek. “But I want to.”_ _

__If she’d had the time, she would have scoffed, _too much to ask_ , as if she had not been hungry for him since the moment he set those eyes on her. If she’d had a second more, she would have given a coy smile, and told him exactly how much she had always wanted him. _ _

__As it was, she had neither the time to say these things, nor to scoff. His mouth was on hers in moments, his lips cupping her own with such tenderness._ _

__And, by all things holy, there was no other way she would have it._ _


	21. Incidents And Pleads

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies for how long it took!!! Hope you enjoy xx

_How long have you wanted to kiss me?_ hopped about her brain, occasionally leaping to her tongue, only to be swept away by Cullen’s. She scooted back further onto his desk, spreading her legs and soaking in his kisses. He followed her, filling the space she had offered, arms reaching around her to rest against his desk. Her thumbs pressed against the supple skin of his cheeks, and the hardness of his jaw. The tips of her fingers were lost in his hair, jerking moans from him at every scrape of nail against scalp. 

Hot, heavy, Cullen’s hand set upon her knee. Their oscillation of tongues and mouths slowed and stopped, leaving behind shuddering breaths. Up, those fingers scorched, and her mind snagged over one desire, one need. Further, she opened her legs, beckoning, begging. 

“Eleine.” She had dreamed of that grate of lust in his voice. That mouth sunk to her neck, latching onto the hypersensitive skin there. She caught her hitched cry with teeth around her bottom lip. His thumb and forefinger incited fires on her inner thigh. A heated tongue joined teeth on her skin, and her head fell back. 

Her fingers encircled his wrist, and for a few moments, she had no idea of their intention. They too, seemed to struggle between pressing his hand flush against her pulsing pussy, or pulling it away. 

She brought his hand up to her mouth, and kissed his palm. She shook over the image of taking those fingers in her mouth, swirling her tongue around them to taste his skin. She released him. Cullen returned from her neck to her jaw and mouth, lavishing more of those wonderful caresses on her. 

“You don’t have much patience for nobility.” Her voice was weak, addled, quivering past her lips in pants. With him so close, she could no longer smell the smoke of his candles, or the pages of his books. “I’m glad my title didn’t scare you off.” 

Cullen stiffened, and his eyes widened. “I hadn’t considered…” he halted, “I have no title outside the Inquisition.” Those amber eyes were looking anywhere but her face. She watched him flounder with a somewhat wicked smile. “I hope that doesn’t— I mean, _does_ it… bother you?” 

He was asking her this now? With her legs spread, a man between them, breasts heaving from being thoroughly kissed? “ _Some_ members of my family might care,” she responded, seeking his heat, hunting his touch, “but my opinion’s what matters.” She nipped his bottom lip, tugging a light groan from him. 

He gave a low chuckle. “Right.” His fingers curled around her jaw, leading her mouth back to his for a few light kisses. “I’m not very good at this, am I?” he breathed, resting his forehead against hers. Eleine studied his face as he closed his eyes. “If I seem unsure, it’s because it’s been a long time since I’ve wanted _anyone_ in my life.”

Maker.

Amber melted into her eyes. “I wasn’t expecting to find that here.” 

Whatever breath she had regained since their kisses, was gone now. 

“Or you.” 

_In his life_. Her heart trembled. What sort of defence was she supposed to wield here? How did one protect themselves against the things they wanted most, when they held the power to destroy them completely? 

This was no one-time sexual encounter, not for either of them. Their hedging hopes and hearts could not bear such a thing. Her palm ghosted over his stubbled jaw and cheek. She nudged his head down to her height, and leaned forwards, smoothing her lips over his closed lids. Left, then right, and back down to his mouth. 

Eleine clung to whatever steel she had. “I have never— you are the first, Cullen.” She felt him shift against her, a warm hand stroking up her side. “I have never had this sort of relationship before.” 

He was silent for a few moments, till he placed tentative arms around her waist. “I have not either.” 

A smile warmed her cheeks. “I suppose we are to find our way through it together.” She saw a tanned face, sweating and hopeful. ‘ _Perhaps we could muddle our way through discovering what so many others covet as the finest of relationships.’_

Cullen gave another one of his chuckles, forehead knocking against her own. “I would like that.” 

Her fingers toyed with the curls at the back of his head. “The Commander of the Inquisition and the Herald of Andraste,” Eleine lilted, “that will have people talking.” 

Cullen sighed and leaned back, eyes cast to the ceiling. Her fingers fell from his head. “You wouldn’t believe how quickly gossip spreads through the barracks.”

Eleine shuffled in her position on his desk. “Does it bother you?”

“I would rather my – our – private affairs remain that way.” Cullen righted himself, placing some distance between them. “But if there were nothing here for people to talk about, I would regret it more.” 

She studied him for a few moments, closing and crossing her legs. She cocked her head. “You are a very generous man.”

Cullen’s blinked, a hand going up to rub the back of his head. Both Eleine and Cullen flinched at three sharp raps on the door. “Inquisitor,” the slimy voice of one of Leliana’s spies called, “there has been an incident.” Cullen jerked back, and Eleine followed him, sweeping to her feet. 

Cullen opened his mouth, but she shook her head. “Get your work done and your rest, Commander,” she lay a hand on his shoulder, “do not worry over this. I will have it underhand.”

His eyes burned on her face. “Summon me if necessary.”

Eleine tilted her head, and gave him a sharp smile. “Of course, Commander.” A few steps away, and she could hear him shuffling. Eleine paused, and looked back over her shoulder. “Is there something else?”

“That really was… nice.”

Eleine left the room with warm cheeks and a smile. The crooked form of a human shadow rushed up beside her and she sobered. This was one of Leliana’s elites. 

She began down the rampart leading to the tavern, itching to be away from the hunkering outline on her left. “Where?”

“The prison.” Eleine tried to pick out the inflection in their voice, the intonation of an accent. Anything. But their voice was dry of personality.

“Details?” she pressed, taking the stairs down to the night swathed courtyard. 

“There is a prisoner of interest. Their health has unexpectedly degenerated.” Against the black washed grass, their shrouded body was nothing more than a shuffle of fabric. 

Eleine sighed, and lengthened her strides for the prison door, its wood stark in the light of a flickering torch. Ill sung tavern songs hunted their steps, the calls and laughs of Skyhold still awake. 

She eyed her nasty little companion as they slipped into the prison first. Eleine clapped a hand over her nose and mouth. A heated stench heaved through the air. Sickness, a deep-seated sickness. 

“Inquisitor?” Leliana’s slick voice called, “down here.” 

Eleine tucked her trembling hands beneath her arms, and closed the door to the courtyard, descending the stairs. Though torches hung in sconces on the walls, it seemed as though they were incapable of penetrating the clinging dark further than a metre radius. The tang of the sea polluted the air from the gaping cavern they still had not successfully remedied. 

The prison cells were empty save one. 

Brown hair, once glorious, now matted, slimy with oil and muck and Maker knew what else. Shuttered eyes she knew should shine cold blue. A noble mouth whose laugh lines had long faded. 

“Mathias?” Such a weak whisper, a crippled voice. 

And those eyes opened, white stained red, blue sheened black. “Eleine.” Something unholy rattled in his lungs and Eleine shook with it. “El—” He toppled forward against the bars of his cell, withered fingers clasping the iron. 

“Inquisitor,” Leliana began, and for a brief moment there, Eleine was aware that her hand was on the woman’s shoulder, shoving her out of the way. But the clash of iron and a dying body in her vision obscured whatever followed the action. Eleine struggled with the lock of the cage, rending the rusted metal in half after it refused to open. 

Mathias fell against her, reeking, shaking, heaving. Eleine felt the ridges of his ribs beneath the rags of his attire. She whipped her head over to Leliana’s rigid form, “Send for Abel.” The woman remained stiff and Eleine felt anger sear up in her throat. “ _Now_ , you useless woman.” 

Leliana nodded to the shadowed for in the corner, and it slipped off without a sound. “Perhaps you should stand back, Inquisitor. It would not do to contract the illness yourself.” Eleine swallowed the ash in her mouth. 

“Eleine,” Mathias panted, “Eleine.” 

“Mathias.” Eleine eased him off her, crouching to the ground and arranging him in her arms. His large stature was diminished by whatever pall of sickness lay over him. He weighed nothing beneath her hands. “Maker, how are you here?” 

Those soiled sockets hazed on her face. “Need—” he coughed again, and Eleine helped him sit up straighter, blood draining from her face at the liquid that spilled from his lips. “They need you.” 

Eleine brushed the clumps of hair out of his face. “Who, Mathias? Who?” 

He looked at her again, and his voice slid to a whisper. “Harper.” Eleine felt ice splinter in her stomach. “Landen and Sarlaros.” 

Eleine drew back, eyeing the shadow of Leliana behind them. She softened her tone. “Did they send you?” 

Mathias gave a vile sort of smile. Blood dried in the crevices of his teeth. “I was the only one left.” His hand fisted in her shirt, tugging. “No other choice.” He toppled over, body wracking with a tirade of coughs. Eleine felt his fingers dip into a pocket of her jacket, and there was a scratch of parchment. 

Eleine wiped at his mouth with her sleeve. “Stay strong, Mathias. My healer will be here soon…” her voice dried alongside his blood on her fingers. “This isn’t where it ends, Mathias.”

He gave her another smile, but even in the dim she could see the purple of his lips. “Your lady spy doesn’t trust you,” he lilted, a child delighting over a secret, “no one ever trusts you, Eleine.” 

She ghosted shaking fingertips over his swelling eyes. “Stay strong, Mathias.” She heard Leliana shift behind them. 

“Are you going to kill them, Eleine?” Mathias wheezed, his weight sagging against her. 

“Stay strong,” she commanded, fingers vices around his arms, legs aching from his leaden body. 

A tear carved a path down the dirt on his cheek. “I’m sorry.” 

“No,” she snapped, “ _stay_ , Mathias.” She grasped his hand on her shirt, hoping the pressure of its squeeze would help him. 

He huffed out a breath. “I’m sorry,” he broke, “I told them.” Eleine slumped atop him, eyes burning, teeth clenched around her bottom lip. “I know now I never should have.” His voice was a brush of sea breeze in her ear. “I was so angry…” 

The door to the prison slammed open, and there was the rush of feet down stairs. “Inquizitor?” Abel called. 

“Over here,” was Leliana’s tepid reply. Another, smaller, shadow joined the Spymaster’s. 

“Get out.” Eleine swallowed the bile at the crest of her throat.

“Inqui—” Light blazed in the room, and Abel yelped at the scorching sconces. 

Eleine clenched her eyes closed, reeling in the pounding of fire through her veins. “ _Out._ ” Abel scuttled off, and Eleine opened her eyes. “You may work for Leliana,” she warned, “but if you ever disobey my orders again, I will make your bones brittle with ash.” 

Leliana’s spy cowered out of his position in the room. “Yes, Inquisitor.” The door to the prison creaked open, and clicked shut. 

“I believed it was unnecessary to inform you before the investigation was complete,” Leliana affirmed, voice so trained, so practiced, “you had much to handle as it was.”

Cold fingers slipped from her vital hand. “No.” Eleine lay Mathias down. She creaked to her feet, back hunched, chest a stampede of horses. “You wished to utilise the time to investigate me.” Hard silence met her words. Eleine wondered at the expression Leliana was showing her back. Was it controlled, calculated, as insidious as the rest of her? Blood swam in her eyes, heating her cheeks. 

“Inquisi—”

“Choose your next words carefully, dear Spymaster, for surely you are as aware as I am.” Eleine’s face was tortured by candlelight as she turned. “There is no one left here but you and me.” 

Leliana’s mouth was a stark line across her face. “It was not my intention for your friend to die.” 

The stench of his body hounded her. “But you could not allow him the attention he needed,” Eleine cocked her head, “because I would be informed by the healers.” 

Leliana’s mouth moved as though through something foul on her tongue. “I am sorry—”

Eleine’s hand beat against the bars, the green of her mark splintering across Leliana’s face. She clenched those thudding fingers around the rusted metal. Grey eyes stalked her movements, fingers twitched for hidden blades. Eleine scraped a nail down the soiled iron. “Around and around we go,” she spoke, soft, low, grating, “time and again, you hound me.” Her cheek pressed against the shaft and Leliana stepped back. “But this time, I won’t let it go, Leliana.”

“I am not among those that fear you, Eleine,” Leliana snarled, face sharpening, “if anything this display proves—”

“That my patience is limited.” Eleine hunted out of the reeking cell. “That you should have listened to my warnings.” 

Leliana widened her stance, arms splayed in entreaty. The calm waters of her face agitated into something far more human. “I never intended for this man to die. I was unaware of the brevity of his health.” 

Eleine cast a shadow over the woman. “You cost a good man his life. Tell me, Left Hand of the Divine.” She licked her lips. “Was it worth what you learned?” Leliana looked away. Eleine laughed, low, sore, cold. She rubbed her brow, and felt some of the blood crust off of her fingers. 

“He was very devoted to you, it seemed, Inquisitor,” Leliana admitted, eyes cast somewhere else in the room. “He spoke only of owing you his life.”

Her boot squelched in something unnameable as she came nose to nose with Leliana. “He deserved every one of your years, twice over,” Eleine spat, “and if I could make it so, I would give them to him.” Leliana could not look her in the eyes. “If you ever challenge me again, I will remove you.” Heat seared between them. “Do you understand me, Tool?” 

Leliana clasped her hands behind her, her shoulders jutting back. She raised her eyes to mingle grey with grey. “As you command, Inquisitor.”

“What is it you suspect me of, Leliana? What is it that you fear I will do?” Her fire snarled under her skin, her heart slamming against the cage of her ribs. 

“When you intonated there were issues within your family, I investigated immediately.” 

Her pounding heart stiffened, and plummeted to her stomach. “Oh? And did you like what you found?”

“Whoever, whatever your father is, he is very good at leaving the slightest footprints upon Thedas. But your brother…” Eleine stepped back. Leliana studied her face. “Samael was not well, was he, Eleine?”

Eleine gripped her arms. “What did you find, Leliana?”

“I believe you know what I found,” the Spymaster replied, the words seeming heavy on her tongue. “There was an incident in the forest, wasn’t there, Eleine?” 

The dark of the cell enclosed Eleine as she retreated within it. “Incident?” 

“I believe you’ve been a killer for much longer than any of us suspected,” Leliana’s eyes flickered, “I _believed_ for a time that this would have twisted you during your stay in the circle.” Leliana removed those eyes from Eleine’s veiled form to look instead at Mathias. “But it seems I was wrong.” 

“Whether it will by my doing or not, Leliana,” Eleine promised, “you will pay for this.” Eleine put her back to the woman. “Get out.” Leliana’s feet made a heavier rhythm against the stone than Eleine was accustomed to hearing from the Spymaster.

Eleine watched as Mathias’ still form was mangled by the wall sconces. 

_‘Oi, oi, oi,’ the straw haired woman spat, ‘’ere’s no way you’re the girl.’_

_‘Mathias said it was,’ a young man argued, and Eleine liked nothing in his countenance. She slid the book she had barely read back onto its shelf, eyeing the strangers. Her fingers warmed with magic._

_‘’ey, fuckin’ brat.’ The woman’s breath stunk over Eleine’s face. ‘Mathias told us what you did for ‘im, aye.’_

_Eleine tasted ash in her mouth. ‘I see Mathias has lathered his tongue with tales.’_

_The man clenched rough fingers around her arm. ‘We’re not the enemy, bitch. They are. Names Travon. This is Harper.’_

_‘Yeah, you fuckin’ brat. Mathias says you can help us.’_

Eleine slumped against the bars, the strength in her legs tortured from her. The ivory chips of his fingers glowed through the dark of his cell. Eleine reached out and threaded them through her own. “There was never anything to apologise for, Mathias,” she quaked. 

_Through the haze of innocence, Eleine could still understand the abhorrence of the flickering shadows. Even without the noise, the pleads and cries, Eleine would know._

_Her bare feet padded over to them, unheard, unsuspected. This close she would be able to see the bubbles of flesh, feel the bloodied steam rising off his body. She saw herself in the eyes of the boy, older than her yet still young. Crystalline blue orbs widened, but he said nothing._

_His attacker never screamed, never let out a sound. They never did, she found, when they died like this. Their mouths opened, an unholy stretch of skin and bared teeth, but whatever popped with heat inside them, burst their ability to yell._

_Eleine brushed off a splotch of blood that had sprayed onto the boys forehead, just below the sweep of his black hair. ‘Shhh.’_

Straining to her feet, she moved as though through mud, and grasped his other hand. Bit by bit she heaved him over the soiled floor, till they left the umbrage of his cell and came out into the writhing light. 

She looked away from his fouled body. “You deserved a better funeral, forgive me, Mathias.” Ash joined the dark, rising from his body and seeping through the cracks and crevices of the room. There was a spark and his body lit, raging with heat. As the flames reached higher, clawing for the ceiling, Eleine turned and left. On, he would burn, till there was nothing left but dust to be carried off into the sea. 

She saw nothing of the world around her as she returned to her rooms. Heard nothing of the people around her, if indeed there were any. 

_‘They need you.’_

Eleine stumbled into her room, heaving herself up her stairs to her desk. Rough hands yanked open her drawers, batted aside papers and books, till the ornate cover of Tamoren’s diary swam in her vision. Eleine fell onto her chair, fingers coveting the pages as she opened it. Out fell the notes she had kept there. 

_I don’t want none of your fucking fire near me, you saggy tit._

The second trembled in her fingers. 

_You never fucking die, do you? Fucking monster._

Her fingertips traced over the burnt edge of the note, where the message had continued. But _‘Landen has need of you’_ existed only in her memory, now. 

Eleine made to withdraw the parchments Mathias had crumpled in her pocket, to find a third, smaller piece nestled in her palm. 

_Thank you, Eleine._

She caressed the strokes of Cullen’s writing. Had it truly been under twelve hours ago, she had received this? She let it slip from her fingers to be lost among the scatter of pages. Two last scraps of parchment remained in her hands, stained, ruddy with Mathias’ blood. Hashes of black ink haunted her eyes. 

_Fucking bitch. Landen is desperate._

_After all these years of knowing you, of seeing the shit you do, I know I really should not be surprised you never replied. Fucking fool I am. ‘Leiney. Landen needs you._

_Please. We fucking need you._

_Please._

Dread thudded through her veins, turning to stone in her stomach. The cold grip around her heart squeezed harder. Visions of their demise, brutal eviscerations, swarmed in her mind, and her fire gnawed at her skin. Her fingers crumpled the letter. The pleads. 

Harper did not plead. She did not beg. Did not use the word _please._

What could Landen possibly want from her after all this time? The only thing he ever cared about was—

Sarlaros. Perhaps she was ill, dying. She snatched the last open. 

_Sarlaros is pregnant._

_Fucking idiot Landen knocked her up and now we’re fucked. Those fucking Templars have been chasing us for the past months. They’re almost on us, ‘Leiney._

_My people— there’s only one left. Won’t be for much longer._

_I know you couldn’t give a shit for any of us. But for the child, please, ‘Leiney._

_Let us come to Skyhold where it’s safe._

Her chair crashed against the wall. Eleine clasped the edge of her desk, and hauled it over. Her cry rang out along the shatter of vials and clatter of books upon her floor. The fireplace roared, the flames beginning to burst through the grate. 

Eleine whipped about the room, hands tugging on her hair, beating at her stomach. She bit down over the fire that pressed at her throat, clawing to be released. 

_‘Are you going to kill them, Eleine?’_

Eleine fell to her knees, throat bleeding raw with one last keen. Her hands clasped her arms, and she knocked her head against the ground. 

If they knew what she had done, she would lose them all. Dorian, Sven. 

Cullen. 

The moonlight and the fire stood watch over her pants that turned ragged with sobs. 

Could she allow the death of an unborn child? 

Could she allow _their_ death? 

“Eleine?” 

Her head snapped up, eyes finding the cowering form of her son peeking around the banister at her. 

Sven’s pallor faded at the sight of her and she wondered what he saw. He jerked towards her, making a few steps before crippling, lurching for the floor. Eleine lunged, catching him before he hit the stone. She gave a few wet pants, sick at the realisation of tears down her face. 

His hand touched her cheek, and she reared back, the cold of his fingers a strike against her burning skin. “Eleine?” he demanded, strain thinning his voice. Eleine helped him sit up, and got to her own feet. 

She could not look him in the eyes. “How well did you know Mathias?” 

There was such a thick silence between them. “Oh,” he breathed, and she turned her face away from him. “He’s dead?” 

Eleine shook her way over to the fire place, hunting its heat. “Yes.” 

“Was it his sickness? But I thought they had managed to find him medicine—”

“Leliana killed him.” She knew it as painfully as the blaze sizzled along her fingers as they sought the flames. The crackle and spit of the fire haunted the space. “She kept him from me, to learn about the things I did in the circle.” 

“In the circle?” Sven trembled, “what do you mean?” 

“She suspected… things.” Eleine leaned against the hearth, forehead resting on the stone eave. 

“Things?” Sven quaked, “Eleine, what’s going on?” 

She felt the tears crust on her face, and remembered the blood on her fingers. “Why are you here, Sven?” 

She heard him shuffle. “There was this boy… but I don’t remember his face and he— he said I needed to come here.” 

She placed dangerous eyes on his hunched shoulders and his worried mouth. “Did this boy have a strange hat?” 

Sven’s mouth was a stiff line. He nodded. “Did you do that, Eleine?” His walnut eyes flicked over her ruined desk, her belongings and work scattered across the ground. She eyed it all dispassionately. 

“I’ve done a lot of things, Sven.” She turned back to the fire. “Things you’ll know one day.” _Soon_. One day soon. 

“Will… will you tell me, now?” Sven trembled, “Eleine?” 

She faced him, and he flinched at whatever expression was carved on her appearance. “No.” 

He looked down at his fingers, toying with the edge of her rug near him. He threw it away, and turned burning eyes back on her. “I’m your son,” he demanded, “aren’t I?” Her mouth dried up. It hung open, empty of words, of rebuttal. “Tell me, Eleine. Trust me.” 

What had she once thought about Solas? That he had sounded like a man confessing his sins before they were found out and made worse by his silence later. Indeed, her silence on her matters with Dorian, Sven and Cullen would degrade whatever chances she had with them. 

She would never have the courage to tell Cullen. She would never have the words to tell Dorian. 

But perhaps she owed the confession to Sven. 

She loomed over the boy, casting a terrible shadow over him as the fire hungered higher behind them. She crouched down till her face came level with his. “As you wish, son.” 

 

He concaved in on himself, shoulders drawn so tight together, he looked as small as a child. Tears and sobs and shakes worried his form. Eleine’s arms ached to sweep him up, to clutch him to her front. But they remained by her side, where they were welcome. 

She stood, wondering if he heard the rattling of her bones as she did so. The sun stabbed light into the side of her face, and she surveyed the rising orb for a few moments. “You have no need to be around me any longer.” Her feet bled over the ground, her innards feeling as though they spilled out of her with every step. Her limbs were thick with lethargy, heavy with pain. The dark lane of her stairwell seemed a pallid cliff. 

“El-Eleine,” Sven sobbed, “don’t leave.” He caught tears with the back of his hands, mouth wide with cries. Her whole body shook. “Please.” 

She fell to her knees, the steps swimming beneath her eyes. 

“Don’t leave me,” he begged. 

She clutched a hand around her throat that clawed and ached. 

“You promised,” he broke, his voice a whip over the room, flaying her scarring wounds open. 

She beat a fist against the ground. “You deserve better—”

“I don’t want better,” Sven screamed, “ _I just want you._ ” 

And Eleine fell over the precipice, cries ringing untempered through the room, tears falling unhindered. She felt as though she had been gutted, as though the boy had taken a blade to her stomach, and carved out everything within. She clutched at her navel, feeling the barrier of fabric scratch over the whole skin there. 

Sven crawled into the arms she opened for him, and hid his head in her neck. Her cheek lay against the rough stubble of his head. 

By the time she had the strength to let him go, the sun had risen above the lip of the mountains, to reign in its place atop the sky. Sven had passed out many hours ago, devoid of the energy to go to her bed first. His uneven breaths brushed against her neck. 

With far more finesse than she had shown in relocating Mathias, Eleine lifted his lolling limbs, stumbling over to her bed, to lay him down. She collapsed on the floor by his side, body trembling with exhaustion. 

Like the undead rising from the swamp, she clambered to her feet, walking on foreign limbs to her ruined work station. Her fingers sought a quill, ink, and parchment. 

She spared Sven a glance as she left, his supine form quelling the rising bile in her throat. 

The hall was a clash of Orlesian masks and Ferelden fur. But she was seeking that swathe of a green hood and a metal plated front. The messenger she caught stared so long at her face, she had the answer to the question of her appearance she hadn’t asked. Off they scuttled, to deliver her message to one of Leliana’s ravens, and to summon Cullen to the war room. 

Eleine wearied her way into Josephine’s office. She was not disappointed; Leliana and the black haired woman conversed in low tones by her desk, brows scrunched. Their eyes were wide upon her, as Eleine entered. 

“I have no use of advisors who conspire against me,” Eleine promised, “your days of insubordination are complete. I had hoped we would learn to work together without threat, but you both seem too fond of the titillations of the Game for that.” 

“Inquisitor—” Leliana stepped forward. 

“One last insurrection,” Eleine warned, “and the world will burn with you both.” Leliana’s mouth clapped shut. “Wait for me in the war room. I will never be so generous again.” 

Josephine left without a word, soon followed by Leliana. Both women had departed without looking her in the eyes. She could smell their surrender in the air. 

Eleine wondered if the disappointment of it all would wash away with her next bath. She wondered if she could manage to survive with Sven’s connection alone. 

She waited for a while in the hall outside the war room, ears hungry for the tramp of metal boots against stone. She lost a little more of her strength every second there was none. Her fingers closed around the cool handle.

Eleine was tugged to a halt by a hand on her arm. She shook her head at the sight of those warm fingers. She remembered the shock she had felt the first time he had grabbed her in such a way. The excitement, the thrill of something unnamed between them. 

Cullen held out a warm loaf of bread, the same colour as his eyes. And yet weaker, paler. It didn’t glitter with the worry and care that was in his eyes. “You did not eat last night, did you?” His voice soothed over her rough edges, all honey timbre and mellow cadences. 

Trembling fingers accepted the breakfast. “No. Thank you, Cullen.” 

He looked away, and she found she recognised the tilt of his mouth as he did so. Not rebuttal, not unhappiness. Consideration. His free hand jittered by his side, and then it was in her hair, brushing the wayward strands back behind her ear. She was dipped in stone, immoveable, unreachable. 

He was gone, now, inside the war room. And she was left with the heat of the bread in her hand, her vision cleared of hair, and a pounding fear in her stomach. 

To some distant hollow that raven would be flying, laden with a thin curl of parchment. Such a small cut of hide and ink. 

And yet, such a damning article. 

_Harper._

_Come._

Eleine had better spend the time she had remaining with her loved ones well.


	22. Seeing Ravens: Part One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for how long it took - almost a month! But we're finally out of the worst of uni and the updates will pick up. Thanks again for everyone who's stuck with myself and Eleine and her crazy crazyness. <3
> 
> Much love! xx

Burnished gold swarmed in the air, obscuring the blue sky. Eleine latched onto Dorian’s arm, hauling him along behind her. The sand scraped across their raw skin, roiling underfoot, hungry and wild. Cassandra rallied their horses behind them, with Cole at her side, probably ass deep in all their brains. 

“Vishante Koffas. How far till camp?” Dorian hollered at her, stumbling as his foot was sucked into the moving sands. 

Eleine clenched her teeth at the grit invading her robes and armour, grating along every crevice and expanse of skin. “Better be close,” she screeched, “or I will burn this sandstorm out of our way.”

“That is not possible, you mad woman,” Dorian called back, “better to be patient than cloud us in ash, too.”

“Happy you came?” Eleine puffed, resting a moment to glance over her shoulder at him. Hair defying its lotion, moustache askew, Dorian unhitched a Tevinter canteen on his right hip. She eyed the roiling snake embossed on its side, the serpents one eye gleaming a foul red.

He took a swig of the mahogany liquid. “What did the illustrious Iron Bull say?” he shouted, “you always know how to throw a party.” Eleine held out her free hand for the flask, and he raised his eyebrows, eyes glittering with some twisted joy. Dorian handed it over, smile beginning to form on his lips. 

Eleine turned back around, continuing their struggle onwards, and tipped the ornate silver bottle upside down. Dorian cried out as the wine splattered in macabre paintings on the sand, to be swept away, out of sight, in seconds. He wrenched it from her hand, mouth moving in a sequence of well-practiced curses. She faced him, halting their progression entirely. Fingers clutched in his shirt, she drew him close to her face. “You drink too much, Dorian.” The storm despaired on around them.

“ _That_ is the most ridiculous thing you have ever defaced your pretty mouth with,” he snapped, his voice half the yowl of the wind, half his own mellow timbre. 

“If you will not listen to the words of a friend,” she warned, “you will listen to the words of your leader.” 

His mouth clapped shut, and she eyed him for a few more moments, till some sand caught in her eye, and she burst into her own fit of swears. “Move on,” she yelled to the others, and they continued till their vision was nothing but the step ahead, till they cared for nothing but the rhythm of their feet and breathing. 

Scout Harding gave them a sharp little grin when they laboured into camp, cursing and bickering. Dorian huffed off to the small stream to right himself, Cassandra veering over to the campfire to interrogate some soldiers on the situation in the region, but Cole stayed by her side, rubbing an idle booted toe into the sand. 

Eleine unbuckled her outer robe, folding it before placing it on a rock, and began the arduous process of flicking out sand from between her breasts and clothes. At some point, Cole began to mutter to himself, a few broken phrases she thought must belong to a poem. 

“It was red,” he whispered, “honey-dew and olive.” Eleine rolled her eyes, tapping him on the shoulder and holding out a water flagon. Those bony fingers, all knobbly bits and tapering points, stoked warning embers in her stomach. She watched him sip the liquid for a few moments, taking in his stature, the way he held it with two hands, lips alternating from inside the lip to outside. The stuttering gulps he took, some small, some large, irregular patterns that bobbed his adams apple up and down. 

A spark of sunlight struck off the hilt of one of his daggers to bury itself in her eye. 

“Sometimes you see them,” Cole peeked up at her from beneath his wide rimmed hat, holding out the flask, “not me.” 

Eleine accepted the water, capping it without drinking herself. “There’s something similar in the… in your builds.” 

“Is there?” he blinked up at her, pale blue eyes glittering with vitality. 

A raven swooped overhead, its oil feathers catching the sheen of the sun. It spiralled upward, chasing eddies and currents to bolster its wings. “Not so much your personalities.” Dorian sauntered back into the camp, threatening Cassandra with an arm around her shoulder. Eleine watched as his teeth gleamed with pretty words and veiled, desperate bids for acceptance. She turned to Cole. “I thought you would have tried to help me.”

“You never wanted my help.” He fumbled with his fingers. “You wanted to help yourself. Glittering grass, flowers so blue, just like his eyes. Wonder what that would be like, but you’re kept in the dark. You don’t mind it, because you’ve always been so bright. You never feared the black. You were always the flame to see with.” 

“You’re a riot, Cole.” She knocked him on the shoulder, and he tilted his head in some manner reply. 

“Safe and solid. Protecting and proud. He feels like quiet, stronger when you hold him.” Cole’s face was lit with the full force of the sun. Every crease, every curve, was caught, a pale specimen before wary eyes. “You’re hurting,” he worried, “I can—”

She lowered herself till she was his height, eye to eye and nose to nose. “Can you?” she breathed, “can you really, Cole?” 

His mouth turned down, his eyes dropping from her face. “Spice and warm. Then so much noise. Kiss me again or I’ll listen to it. Kiss me.” Those eyes, shards of darkened ice, cut into her own. “You held the others’ hands so tightly. You promised you’d never let go.” His brow crinkled. “You promised. But not to him. Why did you let him go?” 

Eleine stood up, fingers digging into her arm. “I had no other choice.” 

The young man cocked his head, peering at her like a black-eyed bird. “They shared your chains and shackles…” he blinked at her, “is that why?” 

She tilted her chin to the sky, a tepid smile on her lips. “Yes,” she looked at him out of the corner of her eye, “we’ll never be free of each other, no matter how much each side desires it. No matter how I…” she looked away, dread a spear in her stomach. 

“Inquisitor,” Scout Harding called, a small smile on her lips, “welcome to the Western Approach.” Sand floated in idle currents in the empty air by Eleine’s side, the fickle ground sweeping away the tracks of the strange man’s boots. 

Eleine manifested as warm and inviting a smile as she possessed. But her mind strayed deep in her belly, where it roiled and churned, her fire nothing but a spluttering flame gasping for air. “It is a delight to see you, again, Scout Harding.” 

The woman’s strides were jarred by a small pause, and Eleine pretended not to see the unpractised recovery. Harding regarded her with care, and Eleine maintained her smile. “Right… you too, Inquisitor.” 

Eleine cocked a hip. “Report?” 

 

Eleine heaved in a breath, holding it within her chest for a moment, and blew out a churning ball of fire. It raged before her, spinning over the sandstone, spoiling it to ruddy shades. Out it spread and caught, scaling the keep walls, lighting the scattered wooden barricades and wagons. It feasted upon the mages and demons, delighting over their screams and pleads. Her feet carried her through the eddies of flame and ash clouding the blue sky, the black of her robes and armour becoming one with the smoke. The keep caged their massacre, embossing corpses in sand. 

Her ivory spectral blade cut down the agonised creatures caught in the fire, slicing through their screams. “Eleine,” Dorian yelled, and she vaulted up the steps to his side. 

An empty wagon splintered and flung up into the air, careening past their heads. Eleine whipped around, searching for the perpetrator, to find a Venatori mage slinking past, head ducked beneath her cowl. Eleine thrust her staff out, feeling fire snap from the crystal to sear across the sandstone, consuming the woman’s robes and ravaging the skin beneath. Dorian swung behind her, hand steadying himself on her back. 

“Dorian?” she called, releasing her blade, fingers grasping around a spear instead. She flung the weapon towards a shrouded Venatori rogue converging on Cassandra. 

The man returned to her side, wiping off a dribble of red liquid from his lips with the back of his hand. He gave her a sharp grin. “No need to worry, my dear.” 

A harried sweep of his body presented no obvious wounds, and she shot him a look. That voice rang out again, addressing her this time, the awful drawl of a sick man. “We serve, Inquisitor! In life and in death.” 

Eleine stamped her staff down upon the sandstone, heat coiling off the blade. Two hungry dogs of writhing flame shot from the crystal to howl across the ground towards Venatori archers. “Cole,” she shouted, “cut out his tongue.” 

The young man flickered between the swell of battle, hunkering up the stairs to the final level of the Warden keep. 

“Did you ask your dear commander about his attitude towards you before you taught him the game of tongues?” Dorian hollered at her, thumping his staff into the stone, mana shimmering around him, foul and reeking of death. A wretched spirit twisted into existence by his side, turning a faceless form to her. 

“I can assure you,” Eleine thundered back, sweeping her staff at Dorian, straining for control over the fade, “he already knew that game.”

“Oh, scandal!” Dorian bid his spirit conjure terror on the nearest Venatori. “The cloistered Templar has more experience than we thought.” An arrow hurtled for the back of his head, and glanced off the barrier she had cast. Dorian gave a booming laugh, letting off bursts of chain lightning to arc through the line of marksmen. She waited, but those words of _a coward, I see,_ never came.

“Go,” Dorian yelled, “we have these—” he thrust out his staff, reanimating a fallen Venatori, “—provincials!” She squeezed his arm, bothered, sparing a moment to check over his body again. As she passed the seeker, Eleine clocked a shadowed rogue on the head. The blades he had meant to bury in the woman’s back clattered to the ground before the stairs, coated with his blood. 

Her legs burned as they carried her up the set of stairs. She could feel her energy stuttering, weakening with the heat trapped between her clothes and her skin. Wet, sticky, she panted beneath the sear of the desert sun. Then there was shadow, and Eleine yanked herself back, slipping down the stairs, as a silver blade swung for her middle. 

A Venatori warrior blocked the top of the stairs, all muscle and size and armour. Eleine licked her lips. “How loud will you scream for me?” 

She reached for him, fingers splayed, and he came for her, sword whipping up for her neck. He stilled, fingers growing lax, broad-sword slapping upon the steps. Vicious and hot, mana torrented from her fingers, scraping its way through his body. 

She could imagine how it felt, to have your blood grow hot, thick, to begin to bubble within its veins. White, heavy, goo burst from behind his helmet, and she grinned. His other eye popped, and he fell to his knees, limbs seizing and contorting. 

“Not even a whimper,” she cawed, leaping over him.

_‘You fucking little… where did you learn to do that? How’re we gunna hide this, huh? Little twisted ‘Leiney. I ain’t fucking touching that, you disgusting fuck.’_

Her foot caught on the top step, and she stumbled into the fray of the last floor. A hammer larger than Bull’s slammed into the side of her barrier, and she gave a strangled yell as her mana recoiled. Her focus scattered, the force of the blow was lost before she could absorb it. She went flying into the midst of Cole’s confrontation with a rogue, a press of bodies consuming her vision, scraps of yellow and red and brown blinding her to the shapes of enemy or ally. Pressure rose within her, a swell of fire. She clawed at the air, at her control, but it chased the memory, the fear. 

“Cole—” she screamed, “out!” And it lashed out of the bonds of her skin. The explosion swept through the ranks of the Venatori, moving too fast to do more than slightly burn and light clothes. She watched, useless, as the fire climbed the walls of the keep, spilling over onto the lower levels. Scattered hay and corpses tended bonfires across the area, coating every breath with the stench of burning hair and blood. 

Cole was by her side in a moment, and she let out a shuddering breath of relief. “Forgive me,” she panted. He only pointed a bony finger at something on the far side of the keep, obscured in the plumes and press of bodies. Then he was gone, and blood sprayed off the back of a Venatori warrior on her right. Her face and body felt thick, full. 

“Here, Inquisitor,” the Venatori leader shouted, “I am ready to serve.” A tall mage sprinted towards her, spell book hovering in the air beside him. “Life is nothing, we will reign—” Cole jabbed a dagger in his neck, before wisping out to some other part of the keep. Eleine gripped her staff with wet fingers, storming over to the dying man. “You…” he spluttered, blood torrenting from his lips and out his neck. His hand raised, fingers sparking. 

Eleine leaned down, and blew on his face. His teeth cracked, his skin drying, tightening and turning to leather. He shrivelled before her eyes, now nothing more than hide hanging off a cracked skeleton. 

_‘Leiney._

Eleine threw herself on, shaking. Bodies sprung up in her way, faceless, formless. Slashes of anger and violence that disappeared one after the other, tombed by flames. She followed the path Cole’s pale finger had set, mind skittering somewhere else, somewhere where the stone was white and cold. 

But there it was, what he had sent her to find. 

Set into the stone, almost unperceivable amongst the chaos, was a man-sized cell. A pallid hand shot out from between the rusting bars, finger pointed, and Eleine halted as dull blue orbs glinted at her through the pall. The disembodied eyes flicked down to the ground at her feet, and back to her face. She could not discern the expression in them, from this distance. They looked like two unpolished diamonds amidst lumps of coal. Lightning snapped around her, and Eleine flinched, foot crunching over something wooden. Battered, worn a staff rolled beneath her foot. 

The eyes strained onto the staff, and back into her own startled orbs, again and again. 

She hitched her booted toes beneath it, and lobbed it over to the cell. 

Without a sound those eyes lowered, and the hand returned, curling around the staff. Still, those eyes stayed on her, and Eleine could not look away. There was something there, an inlaid recognition. 

The body beside her jumped, chest heaving with the manner of a puppet whose strings had been pulled. Up it sprung, and Eleine flinched, conjuring a dagger in her palm, waiting for a tell of friend or foe. 

Limp, bloated, the dead body hobbled over to a Venatori mage, clamping rotting hands around their arms, and descending ivory teeth to their bared neck. The man screamed and screamed, writhing, clawing. Then he jerked, and fell limp upon the ground. 

“Eleine,” Dorian yelled from the lower level, and she took a step back. Those eyes watched her. Dread pumped through her veins, but she could not tell what it was about the eyes that incited the cold sweat above her lip. “Eleine!” 

She went, wresting control of the battle from the Venatori. Dorian sunk against her when the last was rendered to his knees, Cassandra preparing her blade on his neck. She hitched his arm over her shoulder, trying to spy the wound causing him trouble. 

“It’s nothing, my dear,” he mumbled through heavy lips. Eleine helped him settle on a nearby crate, before ridding him of the outer layers of his robes. There, stretching from beneath his peck to his hip was a shallow gash. Eleine clicked her tongue, glaring up at him.

“Nothing? Really, Dorian.” She looked over her shoulder at Cassandra. “Cassandra. Hurry up. Bring me the bandages.” 

“What _was_ that, Eleine?” Dorian huffed, brow gouged with lines. Eleine sat back on her heels at the sharpness of his eyes. “We saw it, the fire came over the walls. If we had been up there… if Cole wasn’t what he was…” Dorian smacked his lips and her heart thudded, heavy, in her stomach. She opened her mouth but Dorian clicked his tongue, making a mockery of her. “I know something is wrong, Eleine.” He trembled his way close to her face, blocking out everything else she could look at. She felt sick. “It has been wrong for weeks now.” Eleine opened her mouth to interrupt and he hurried on, words spitting and harsh. “I do not just mean when we were travelling— you were like this back at Skyhold.”

He looked over her shoulder, lowering his voice. “I had thought you would come to me after… after you saw Cullen. Beguiling me with tales of how you ripped off his shirt and you devoured each other on his dirty floor. But you did not.” She dropped her eyes. “And for the rest of the week I did not see you near him once. Sven looked like he was withering again. You barely saw him. You barely saw anyone, Eleine.” His voice wavered. “You barely saw me.” 

“Dorian,” she cut in, grabbing his arm. 

He shook his head again. “And when you did… it was like we were in Haven again. It was like you… like you—" He chewed through something foul in his mouth. “You’re not sleeping, you’re not talking. You’re not eating. Anyone else is too scared to say anything lest you turn their tongues to ash—" 

Eleine placed her fingers on his cheek. Dorian stilled, eyes wary on her face. “Enough, Dorian. Enough. I do not have all the answers for you. You’re right. I have been distracted… afflicted.” Her fingers slid off his cheeks, trailing down his chin, to fall by her side. She glanced over her shoulder to see Cassandra converging on them. “Something happened… after things went right.”

“What, Eleine? What is it?” Dorian begged, fingers squeezing her arm. 

She looked between his eyes, and the sweat tracing rivers down his forehead. She remembered the time he had appealed to her, throwing himself and his feelings at her feet. “I invited someone into my halls.”

His brows contracted in confusion. “Who?” he whispered. 

Cassandra knelt down by her side, rolls of white cloth in her hands and Eleine pressed her lips together. Dorian gripped her wrist, jerking his chin back up the stairs. “Go.” He gave her a hollow grin. “I can see you need to.” Eleine eyed him for a few more moments, hands stiff by her side. She nodded, and left him to Cassandra’s care. 

Eleine kept her eyes up, and she shook her way into the stairwell. She leapt over the body oozing there, not sparing it a glance. Stepping over the charred bodies scattered across the ground, she waved a hand in front of her face to dissipate the swell of smoke seeping from them. 

Those eyes watched her from the cell. The pallid, arctic chips never straying from her face, not at the low voices from her companions, nor the lingering groans of the dying. She clamped a hand around one of the bars, keeping her face passive through the scrape of the rust against her glove. 

“Who are you?” she demanded, feeling the cold of the prison creep through the bars. 

The eyes blinked and the tips of the fingers appeared again from the darkness. They inched to her face, hesitant and sluggish. She had no idea why she did not jerk back, cower from the icy touch. But she could not move. The fingers traced her eyebrows, gentle, fearful. Her throat and lungs were empty of breath, shards of cold within them. “Who are you?” she breathed. 

A second pair of eyes joined the first, identical in shape and colour, yet softer in expression. She took a shuddering step back. Cole flickered into existence beside her. He looked up at her, but she could not turn away from the eyes. “The one who is like Bull needed you to find them.”

“Move aside,” she snapped at them all. The eyes disappeared, and Cole bumbled his way back a few steps. She found the iron lock, and blew heat upon it. For a long while nothing happened, then it seemed to droop, its form loosening, till it began to drip. She blew harder, sucking in gulping breaths in between, sweat beading across her brow and face. Away, it melted, and she wrenched the door open. 

Out, two boys squeezed. Young men, perhaps, but seeming younger by their thin arms and legs, the frailness of their chests and the swell of fat on their cheeks. Black hair was slicked against their scalps, matted with oil and grime. One cringed behind the other, daring not, it seemed, to look at her without a body between them. 

“Who are you… both?” she spat, eyes running over their features. There was a quirk in their eyebrows, an upturn she had only seen in nobility. 

They only blinked those cold eyes at her. She looked at Cole, but he was crouched down, facing away from them and seemingly playing with the sand. 

Eleine took a step towards them, and they took a step back. “Tamoren mentioned two young—” The second boy hopped out from behind the first, eyes glittering, lips cracking into a smile. Eleine eyed him. “Tamoren,” she repeated. The boy clapped his hands together, and she shook her head. “You may return with us to Skyhold, however, you will be investigated once there, do you understand? Give me one reason to suspect you are untrustworthy, and I will see to it you never leave the desert.” They sidled up towards her, and she moved away from them, eying their dirty faces. 

“Inquisitor?” Cassandra snapped, “who are these apostates? More of Erimond’s men?” The seeker unsheathed her blade and strode through the carnage to Eleine’s side, leaving Dorian to hobble his way over to them himself. 

Eleine made to open her mouth, to command Cassandra to put the sword away, but the boys hurried behind her back, little hands clinging to her robes. Dorian chuckled. “Seems they’re the first to become fond of you so soon, my dear.”

Eleine twisted her head around to see them, only catching glimpses of muck and blue eyes. Frustration coiled in a tight ball in her stomach. “Cassandra,” she snapped, “put the sword away.” Cassandra hesitated, hand wavering. “Now,” Eleine bit, and the woman did as she asked. “Dorian, get them off me.” The man gave another light laugh, but with Cole’s help, eased them away. 

“What are you names?” Dorian inquired, brow creased. 

They looked at one another, and squatted, fingers tracing in the sand. Cassandra huffed beside her, uncomfortable and Dorian raised his brows at her. Together they loomed over the boys, watching as they stroked things in the sand, some doodles and some characters. 

The excitable one, latched onto her hand, and tugged, pointing a finger at his drawings and a word scrawled above them. Eleine yanked her hand back, and crouched down between the boys. 

_Oren_ was gouged into the blood splattered sand, atop various pictures of a staff, a circle and what looked to be Andraste burning at the stake. Eleine looked to the calmer ones side, and found similar depictions. A staff, a wonky elfroot and Andraste at the feet of the Maker, was crowned by the name, _Odell._

Eleine leaned back on her heels. “Odell and Oren, is it?” They gave her a toothy grin.


	23. Seeing Ravens: Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a while there I wasn't so sure, but I really am alive I swear. Uni is the devil. Insidious, hitting you when you least expect it. Thank you all for the comments and kudos, they were a balm on my suffering soul through the last semester. xx
> 
> But I have returned for a few weeks! My apologies for the wait xx 
> 
> Much love <3

In the following weeks, the twins never said a word. No matter the demands Cassandra gave or the sweet words Dorian flattered them with. They clung to Eleine’s side, as much a part of her as the clothes she wore. It was a gradual process of surrender on her part, through the nights of waking up to find them snuggled atop her like mabari pups, and the days of tearing her hand out of their searching fingers. 

She had held a baby once, a cousin she believed, when she was very young. There was a similar expression in their eyes; every time she looked down to find them staring up at her, she had the odd sensation of gazing into the curious eyes of a child. Unblinking, steadfast, unmindful of the duration of polite eye contact. 

She had been interested to see how Cole would continue to interact with them, and was beyond amused to find them far more interested in Cole than he was in them. Like researchers around a new specimen they circled him, poking his shoulder and fingering his blades. Cole did not seem to mind, and would hold his arms a little wider for them to look at his sides. 

“They seem to know that he is more spirit than human,” Dorian murmured to her one day, squinting eyes on the boys. 

She gave a slight nod, quirking a smile as one of them reached for Cole’s hat only to have the young man shake his head at them. Sand jumped up from beneath their feet as they began a game for his hat, battling around the top floor of the keep, barging past merchants and soldiers alike. “Considering they follow the same disgusting art as yours, I am not surprised.” 

Unease jabbed at her abdomen as the twins dodged around Cole’s slight frame, lunging at him and leaping back. Oren flung himself at Cole, and the spirit stumbled back, whipping around to hurry away, only to catch himself before ramming into a crate on which Odell stood. The desert sun seared down on them, once hidden by Odell’s frame, now exposed to blind Cole. Fingers snatched out, only to clamp around empty air. Sand settled in the space Cole had stood. Eleine chewed her lip. Children they may be, but she could see the stain of killers on their every movement, as much as she had seen it on herself so many years ago. 

Dorian gave a light huff. “My, my, is the fearsome Inquisitor afraid of the dead?” 

Eleine started, casting a look at the man. Irritation swelled in her stomach and she returned her eyes to the now stomping boys. She wondered if the rough look twisting Dorian’s face was similar to her own. “The dead should remain dead.”

He gave her an empty smile. “Can’t have those monsters returning to destroy you, hm?”

Across the babble of people, the scatter of colours and shapes of her Inquisition, Cole’s eyes pulled her own. “My monsters aren’t dead.” He watched her for a moment, before he was gone, the Inquisitions flag pole visible in his absence. 

“Eleine,” Dorian began, and she shook her head at him, lips tight and thin. A raven screeched above them, claws outstretched for her shoulder. Retreating from Dorian, she waited for the bird to land and snatched up the scroll tied to its back. As she flicked it off her shoulder its scraping _caw_ flayed her nerves. Eleine gave the boys one last look, and hurried off to the opposite corner of the Keep, fear quickening through her veins, heat pulsing in her cheeks. 

_‘Leiney._

Through the time they had spent hunting down the Venatori, neutralising the wildlife and establishing her control over the area, Griffin Keep had been repaired and filled with Inquisition soldiers. She pushed through milling scouts and bargaining merchants, now, wondering how long it would be till the sun dropped and they shut up for the night. By the scent of stew coiling through the air, not too long. 

She found a corner stuffed with crates of produce and herbs, and huddled in, out of sight. The scent of dinner was lost to the tang of elfroot and the waft of oranges. Eleine shook her head at the undignified scratches across the parchment, terrible hashes and blotches of ink. She sunk against the crate behind her, fingers grinding into her forehead. The tightness of her stomach eased, leaving only a vague churn of unease. 

_Eleine._

_~~Leliana~~ _

_~~The Lady Spymaster was at my door today~~ _

_I heard of what happened with the ~~Wodens~~ Wardens. I hope you are okay. _

_~~I am not~~ _

_You’re the ~~Inqsitor~~ Inquisitor. You need to be there. _

_~~When~~ _

_Be safe._

_Sven._

Eleine sighed, and raised her brow at the eyes peering over her shoulder. Odell and Oren flinched, and the sight of them disappeared as they ducked behind the rickety crate she had leaned on. She stood, and turned around, looking down at their cowering forms. Oren gave her a watery sort of smile, popping up from behind the chipped crate first. Odell pointed at the note still in her hand, blinking dull eyes at her. 

She gave them a dark look. “And you think spying deserves answers, hm?” Oren paled, and tugged on Odell’s arm, bottom lip quivering. Odell nodded at him, and turned imploring eyes on her. 

She returned their gaze, unphased. Oren pushed his bottom lip out further. “It’s from my son,” she sighed, “he’s at Skyhold.” 

They peered at her, eyes carved into wide orbs. Oren’s mouth was somewhat ajar and Odell pointed a shaky finger at the note. 

“Yes,” Eleine smiled, “and he’s about your age, too.” The climbed out from behind the crate, quiet as they always were, and sat on the sandstone beside her. Eleine rolled her shoulders, and eased herself backdown between them, rubbing the sand from the ground off her gloves and onto her pants. Odell, she had noticed, had a slightly more crooked nose than Oren, and seemed to take on the role of the eldest sibling. He did not mind more distance between them, unlike Oren, but by no means could be considered un-needy. Certainly not, considering how he wound his arms around hers now, and lay his head on her shoulder, openly reading the letter she had received. Oren mirrored him, the intangible bond between them sharpening her edges and tensing her limbs. She always felt like they were talking to one another, simply not aloud, where she could hear them. 

Odell reached out, and took the letter from her, reading it close to his face. Oren snuggled in closer to her side, fleeing from the increasing chill that whispered of the approaching night. He craned his head to look at her, and blinked wanting eyes at her. Eleine gave a weary smile. “You want to know about him?” They both nodded, and Odell gave her the letter back. “He’s… an odd boy.” She cocked her head, folding the letter and slipping into one of her pouches. “I believe the first time I saw him… was in the templar dining hall. Skinny little thing, with the wildest hair.”

For a time she told them of Sven in the circle, of his failure to fit in with the other templars. Of how the other boys in training would sit away from him in their dining hall, and how she could see it all from the window in the library. 

“They seemed to think being within the same area as him would infect them with the disease of incompetence,” she laughed, “Sven knew how ridiculous it was, even at that age.” She regaled them with the way he smiled at them all, calling out jokes she could not hear, causing the older Templar boys to toss food at him. 

“Even now, I know the way his face stretched into that laugh, so happy, so uncaring.” She shook her head. “He never did care when someone belittled him.”

She told them of how she had met him, finding him beneath the bed when the circle had revolted, and again, in the Hinterlands, shaking and injured, worried she was to be his killer. Until he had recognised her. 

Eleine halted at the memory of the attack on Haven, at the death and the stench and the fear of his ruined body in her hands. 

_‘Leiney._

Odell found her hand, and held it. She pulled herself free of them, and stood, face to the purpling sky. She sniffed, finding the rancid scent of death still on her clothing. 

Eleine looked at them over her shoulder, swallowing past the fist in her throat. “We leave soon for Skyhold, you remember what I told you, yes?” They nodded, lips tugging down. She sighed. “You will be fine, so long as you are what I believe you are, I will not allow harm to come to you from my people.”

They looked at one another, and Odell took Oren’s hand. He nodded at her, brows drawn. She left them there, in silent conversation with one another, striding into the crowds of soldiers and mages saying their goodnights. They addressed her, as she passed, but she did not stop to do the same. There was a wetness in her eyes promising to stay. A thudding in her ears that haunted her wherever she went, whatever she did. She could hear it over the screams and shrill of battle, and lurking around Dorian’s spiked words. 

From the corner of her eye, she saw a dark slash of black and, unbidden, Eleine fell out of the flow of the crowd, hunting past them. There was something terrible nestled amongst an array of blades, something she needed in her hands. The hobbled, hunch-backed merchant looked up at her beneath bushy brows, blue eyes startled as she strode up to him. 

Besides curved blades and snubbed daggers, was the finest staff she had ever seen. It gleamed a sinister black, seeming to liquify into oil to twist around the form of a woman, hands spread in power. Two prongs circled from her lower back to extend above her head, her throne and her crown. 

The merchant grasped it with thick fingers, holding it out to her with a lowered head. The moment her fingers curled around it, fire seared through the metal staff to tingle on her fingertips and the pads of her palms. It sung to her in low tones, a familiar melody that set alight the embers in her stomach. She traced her finger down the obsidian grip and body, to the tapering end that cut into a wretched blade. Her finger dipped in and out of its serrated edge, tracing the side of the divots with dark delight. 

“Does it please you, Inquisitor?” The man grinned, rubbing his grubby hands together. 

She eyed him. “It seems elven.” 

The merchant bobbed his head up and down. “It is, Inquisitor, it is. I found it many years ago in a ruin. Had an elf with me, I did. He said it has an inscription which reads ‘Pyre of the Forgotten.’” She fingered the carvings he spoke of, frowning. 

She returned her eyes to the man, wondering what Solas would think of her buying it. She slipped her fingers into one of her pouches, and tossed him a few coins. “It’s mine.” 

“It is,” he crowed, “it rightly is, Inquisitor. Thank you,” he bowed, “thank you.” 

She unhitched the staff already slung across her back, scarred and ruddy with dried blood. “Sell it for a few coins.” 

The merchant’s lips widened in his grin, his molars peeking through the soft redness of his mouth. “The Inquisitor’s unwashed blade? I do believe I could earn a month’s living for that.”

Eleine snorted, lobbing it to him, and catching the silver coins he threw to her. “The Orlesian’s would offer you far more, I’d bet.”

His answering hiccupping laugh followed her as she returned to the crowd, boon hitched to her back. Her eyes looked over the grim faces of her soldiers and the eager, shinning eyes of the merchants, seeking that coil of black hair above a regal mouth. 

One leg cocked, the other spread out, broad shoulders haloed in the evening’s pink light, Dorian reclined against the Keep’s walls beside the Inquisition’s flagpole. Eleine remained within the obscurity of the crowd, unseen. The crumpled letter in her pouch seemed to burn through the pouch to her skin. Sven whispered in her ear, _Tell me, Eleine. Trust me._

_Spiralling, spiralling,_ Cole had said. _Hollow, hungry_. Eleine’s heart thudded in her chest, heavy, bloated. _Alone is safe, alone you can see it all._

Eleine turned away from the man, hunting after the warm scent of stew. A surprised elf with a crooked nose looked up at her from the pot, hung low over pulsing embers. Eleine held up a single finger, and the elf bounced her head up and down, filling one bowl with the murky soup and balancing a wooden spoon inside it. _It is too late._

Eleine gave a weak smile in thanks, and took it from the young woman, tracing her steps back to Dorian through the press of bodies. _You are no longer alone._

Dorian blinked startled eyes at her as she came to stand before him. His fingers smoothed over his moustache. 

_You cannot go back._

Eleine cocked her hip, curving her free arm around her middle, and held out the dinner to him. “Some peasant’s food for you.”

Dorian rose a brow, mouth quirking while his eyes remained still. “My,” he smacked his lips, fingers snatching the bowl from her, “it is a lucky night for me, indeed. You are ill, I presume? In need of assistance with some diabolical plot, perhaps?” He discarded the food beside him, the stew sloshing out over the sides, and crossed his arms, spreading out his other leg.

Eleine sighed, clutching herself with both arms now. “What are you blathering about, Dorian?” She slid her gaze around the Keep, tracking the distance between them and the lingering masses. The closest soldier caught her gaze, and froze, before jerking his red head into a bow and scuttling off. The rest, it seemed, followed suit in giving them a wide berth. 

“Fearsome Inquisitor Eleine has brought me dinner,” Dorian snarked, eyes heating, “I wonder what brings about this sudden burst of compassion – oh, and some form of humour, too.” 

Eleine felt her legs weaken, and sat herself down before him with a tired breath. _You held the others’ hands so tightly. You promised you’d never let go._ “I am always possessed of humour,” she returned, voice thin. 

“In a rustic, Southern sense,” Dorian mocked, “all silence and rough manners. And let us not forget the weeks of avoiding the only friend that they have – that is, with no exception, my favourite joke—”

“Dorian.” Eleine clasped both her hands over his cheeks, pulling his face close to hers. She saw herself in the man’s wide eyes. The bags beneath her eyes carved great shadowed lines down her face. Her smoky eyes were nothing but murky pools sheening with tears. “I am sorry, I am sorry. I—” her voice broke and she cleared her throat, “ _am sorry._ ” 

His fingers circled her wrists, as though to tug her hands off his face, and she clung on harder. “I was wrong,” she pleaded, “a coward. I do not know how to… to—” she shook her head, fighting with her tongue, “I was afraid of you finding out…” She choked on the words. “The things I have done and watching you leave me, hate me so I… I. Dorian, I am sorry.” 

He was silent, mouth slightly parted, eyes roving her face. His fingers spasmed over her wrists, till they went limp and dropped to the sandstone between them. Dorian pulled back from her, and she let him, fingertips cooling immediately with the sting of the night. His head dropped, his eyes pinioned on the floor. Eleine pressed her lips together, stomach roiling, her core nothing more than wisps of stale smoke. “Why now?” Dorian’s whisper almost went unheard. 

She clutched her hands around her arms, nails digging in through the thick leather. “They’re coming.” A little beast railed at her throat, beating its clawed fists against the raw skin.

Dorian was silent and still for a long time. “Who, Eleine?” There was a slowness, a thickness to his voice she had never heard before. 

She swallowed the bile that crested her throat. “My first companions.” 

_‘Leiney._

His eyes were on her now, and there was a light of fear in them. “Who are they, Eleine? Why are you… are they coming to kill you?” 

Eleine gave a hollow laugh at the concern colouring his voice. “No, Dorian. Though Harper would not mind to see me dead, they are only seeking harbour within Skyhold.”

He was quiet for a time, till his voice came again, hushed and harsh. “Why are you so afraid?” 

Eleine buried her face in her hands, feeling her shoulders sink into her chest. She scraped through her mind for words, for anything to say, to tell him. To somehow explain it all. Her hands dropped from her face. “Because, Dorian, they were… _complicit_ in the atrocities of the Circle Horror.” 

His eyes seared into hers. “This, Travon, was it?”

She gave a short, jagged nod. “He was… one of them.” 

“Ahhh,” the man groaned, flopping back against the Keep’s wall again, one arm coming up to cover his eyes. “And they were your ‘companions’? My my, someone has not been honest about much, has she? I’m pink with surprise.”

Eleine averted her eyes to the cuts of sand stretching into the horizon behind Dorian. The wind carved desert was fading, serrated ridge by serrated ridge, into the night. “Would you have been honest?” Her eyes hunted over his face. 

The man did not look at her. “And are you complicit, Eleine?” 

He could not see her slashing, pained smile. “What a ridiculous question, Dorian. Of course.” 

Dorian’s arm slid off his eyes and thudded down beside him. He watched her from beneath kohl lidded eyes. “Of course,” he echoed, “of course.” He leaned towards her, and she stiffened. Those warm fingers, calloused as her own from the rub of a staff, traced along her jaw. “Of course,” he said again, and tugged her face to his, pressing his forehead against hers. 

She shook, teeth biting on her lips to stop the tears gathering in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she pushed out through the squeeze of her throat. 

He nodded his head against her, and their heavy, uneven breaths filled the space between them. After a while he pulled back, lying back against the wall with a groan. Night had fallen around his shoulders, and lit torches warmed his face into deeper honeyed tones. “Ahh, look,” he said, nodding his head up to the sky. 

Eleine followed his gaze, upturning her face to the stretch of the purple night sky. Her mouth hung just that slight bit ajar as she beheld currents of colours, rivers of green and purple and blue. The interloping lights shimmered and flowed, pilfering the star’s glory. 

“Cole said to me once,” she spoke to him, keeping her eyes on the tapestry of coloured threads, “that it was too late.” She blinked her eyes, finding the lights imprinted on the inside of her lids. “I can no longer revert to that space of safety I was in.” Eleine met Dorian’s eyes. “I’m not alone anymore. And it scares me, Dorian.”

“I will not be taken away from you,” he breathed, “no matter who – what – descends upon our dirty home.” 

She dug her fingertips into her brow, rubbing at the thumping pain there. Eleine nodded, the tightness in her throat stealing all the words she might have said. Instead she followed the pull of his hand on her arm, and allowed him to bring her to his side. 

“He will not be, either,” he promised, circling her shoulders with a heavy arm, “so do not run from him, Eleine. Not like you did me.” 

She let the back of her head hit his shoulder, turning her gaze back to the sky. “I won’t claim to believe you, love. But in the time I may have left with Cullen…” she brought a hand up to clutch her sore throat. “I want to spend it loving him.” 

Dorian’s fingers threaded through her own, pulling them from her throat. “It’s going to be alright, Eleine.” 

Her lips turned up in pain. “I don’t deserve that.”

“Yes, perhaps,” he nodded, but squeezed her hand, “but that is not for you to decide. He will make his judgement when it is time, as I have.” 

_Come._

Not long left.

“As I am sure, Sven already has.”

Eleine clung to Dorian’s hand just that little bit tighter. 

A raven swam through the currents of colour in the sky, its oily feathers shining pallid white at the tips. 

 

Eleine’s eyes ached, during their journey home, from turning up to the sky, searching for a flash of black, a wretched raven delivering the message that would damn her. Perhaps it would be from Leliana, a cursive, slashing note. Perhaps it would say: _I was right about you, Inquisitor. The world will know you for what you are. The monster that defaced our cause._

Or maybe, worse, it would carry that spiked, sure writing of Cullen’s hand. _You lied to me_. Eleine shuddered atop her horse, in her bed roll, and in the stream as she washed, every time the thought came to her. _I trusted you. Mages cannot be free, he would say, you are everything I was told they were._

Yet too, it could be from Harper. _Such a fool I never thought you to be, ‘Leiney. I wouldn’t come back if I were you. They know._

But no such nightmare came in the oily flesh of a raven. Eleine found herself closing her eyes, trying to see the colours of a night not long passed carved on the inside of her lids, rather than the shadow that haunted her. 

As they trundled over the sand and onto dirt to snow, Eleine found her mind emptying, calming. She felt her insides hollow out, her energy leak from her skin, to be lost amongst the wisps of snowflakes in the air. Her fire was topped with ice, the flames crusting and chipping away. 

Skyhold, worn, grey, cast into the murky sky by jagged mountains, made something in her still. As Odell and Oren pulled their shared horse close to hers, their brittle fingers winding their way into her own, she remembered the time she had first seen it. Eleine had been everything they were now, fearful, hopeful, eyes wide, mouth slack. Shaking with her own insignificant existence, reduced to a smidge of clothes and bones atop sludge trodden snow. 

Cassandra drew up beside her, face cut into sharp relief. Her stern mouth was drawn down at the edges. “Thank the Maker.” 

Eleine’s breath misted before her as she heaved out an answering sigh. Her eyes returned to the looming castle. “Though darkness closes, I am shielded by flame.” 

Cassandra hummed in agreement beside her, knocking her heels into her mount, and continuing down the frozen path. Eleine wondered how the woman had not heard the tremble in her voice, the heightened pitch at the end – the upturning of a question. Eleine squeezed the fingers in her own, then pulled them free, clamping hers around the reins. 

She jerked her dusky steed to follow Cassandra and clenched her teeth around a wisp of smoke coiling up in her throat. 

Ragged bodies of refugees met them at the turn of the path onto the main road into Skyhold. They huddled across the bridge with exposed ankles and in some cases, bare feet. Elves skirted the corners of the crowds, a few Dalish with cinched mouths trailing even further back. 

With their heads lowered and shoulders hunched, they did not see Eleine and her company as they clopped past onto the bridge, nor seemed to care. Cassandra muttered a few greetings to them, whispered words of encouragement to keep going. A heavy, heady stench rose from the mass of survivors, and Eleine crinkled her nose, urging on her steed. 

A hand snatched at her ankle, and Eleine kicked out, stomach careening for the floor. An elven woman’s bony fingers were latched onto her, the skin of her face seeming just be enough to stretch over her bones and teeth. A shivering, silent child sat curled in her arms, the angles of its body sharp and wretched. On, her horse trotted, and the woman stumbled to keep up. 

Eleine trembled as the woman failed to force sound out of her mouth, and held her child out to Eleine instead, eyes shining. Eleine looked on to Cassandra, and barked the woman’s name, causing the Seeker to jerk on her mount, whipping around. Eleine took the child, stomach churning at the feel of bones, and tucked it in between the great folds of her cloak. She felt the barest of fingers curl in the breast plate of her armour, and looked down to see the child closing its eyes. 

Eleine tilted her head at the elf by her side. “Cassandra, help her onto your horse.” Cassandra’s grim mouth turned down further at the sight of the woman, who had begun to lag, eyes slipping shut. The seeker pulled her horse back, strong hands clasping the woman’s shoulders, and heaving her up and onto the saddle in front of her. Eleine could see bone legs pop out from behind Cassandra, and the woman seemed to struggle to hold the collapsed woman. 

“On,” Eleine barked, kicking her horse into a run, one arm clasping the child firm and safe to her chest. “You’re almost there,” she breathed to it, “almost.” She could hear her companions follow her speed, the clap of hooves on the bridge stabbing into her ears. 

Soldier’s yells rang out as she burst through the gates into the courtyard, and pulled up short before two chatting merchants. Her horse reared, hooves flying before their startled faces, before slamming back down onto the ground, mud and water splashing up its legs. She turned to the milling crowd, mouth opening, a burst of something within her. “Refugees approaching,” she yelled, “send for Abel, meet them on the bridge. Bring food, water and blankets.” They blinked at her, stunned. “ _Now_ ,” she thundered. 

“Yes, Inquisitor!” someone shouted, and the courtyard exploded with movement. Soldiers and scouts ran and called and jostled with barrels. 

“Ride out with wagons,” Eleine continued, voice booming over the commotion, “carry them the remaining distance.” She clutched the child to her front as she slipped her seizing body off her mount, black hide boots sloshing in the muddy ground. Her companions dismounted around her, and Eleine caught sight of Odell and Oren edging toward her. 

She caught the arm of a passing soldier. “Take those two to my room. They speak to no one and go nowhere. Guard the door and no matter what tricks they use,” Eleine glanced over her shoulder at their paling faces and wide eyes, “do not let them out.” 

“Aye, Inquisitor,” the woman nodded, face pinched with worry. 

She considered the stillness of their faces. “And should the scholar Tamoren ask to speak with them, deny him. Should he resist,” Eleine turned back to the soldier, “do what you must to subdue him.” 

The soldier’s expression smoothed out, her fingers tightening around her sword. “As you command.” 

Odell took a forceful step toward her, expression darkening, and Eleine shook her head. “Go, I will come for you when I can.” They watched her every step they were led away, the soldier’s tight hands on their shoulders.

Cassandra helped the elven woman hobble over to her, and Eleine revealed the child to her from its snug place beneath her cloak. Those thin fingers reached out. And fell. The woman slumped in Cassandra’s arms, head lolling. 

Eleine whipped around. “Abel,” she shouted, “Abel.” Through the rush of bodies, she could not see him. She turned back to the pale Cassandra, and now Dorian, who had just joined them. “Find him, Dorian. Get her somewhere where he can see you,” she told Cassandra, rearranging the child in her arms to be supported by one. They nodded to her, and hurried off, and she sought out the faces she needed. 

Blackwall hurried up to her from the stables, and just over his shoulder she could see Cole flashing about amongst the worried onlookers, whispering in their ears. The gruff man, as hairy as she remembered him to be, looked down at her and the child in her arms with stormy eyes. “My lady—”

“Bring wood to the centre of the courtyard and prepare a fire,” she ordered, already striding off towards a nearby soldier. She heard Blackwall give a grunt of assent as she clasped the arm of the harried in front of her. He turned wide eyes on her face. “Clear the area of anyone not of use.” He ran off without replying and she continued on herself, barking orders and rubbing some warmth into the child in her arms. 

As she was midway through a lengthy discussion about where to house the incomers and who should have priorities over the cleaner rooms, a point of contention between herself and the noble-born Inquisition planner, she lost her voice, and her heart stilled. Those amber eyes watched her from the steps to the throne room. They darted down to the child in her arms, and then back to her face, misting with some emotion she could not read. 

Her stomach lurched, pulling toward him, her limbs buzzing. 

Cullen watched her with a hand on his sword, the fur of his mantle bristling with the wind, a few strands brushing his jaw. Eleine wondered whether her need was driving her mad, or was it truly his spiced scent brushing against her cheeks, filling her nose. 

He took a step toward her, broad shoulders dipping with the action. 

“No more arguments,” she said to the woman staring at her, eyes not leaving Cullen, “or I will have you replaced.” She saw the woman dip her head in her periphery, but she was moving past her now, the tug of her stomach dragging her towards him. 

“Refugees coming in,” a soldier called, and she lost sight of Cullen as her people surged towards the gates, jostling her along with them. The child tucked its head in to her chest and she gave it a gentle pat on the head. 

Mouths wide, eyes shining, faces lined with tears, the refugees trundled in on the wagons, small shoulders all covered by blankets. Some children scoffed down small bread rolls and apples, others cringing into their parents side. 

“To the centre of the courtyard,” Eleine instructed her people, “lay out bedrolls for the injured.” Soldiers helped lift the emaciated bodies of the wagons, while scouts continued to divvy up food and water, and her merchants plied them with shoes and cloaks. 

Eleine helped them gather around the stack of wood, its perfect hatching ready to be lit. Each person she came close to watched her with wide eyes and stiff faces. Some held out a hand to her that she would squeeze with her free fingers. None spoke. She found Blackwall crouched on the other side, stones sparking in his hands. He looked up at her with a drawn brow. “The wood is too wet to light, my lady.” 

Eleine eyed the wood, sniffing at the closest log. She waved a hand at Blackwall. “Stand back.” He raised his brow but stood and walked back a few steps. “Make sure the others are a safe distance.” His eyes lit with understanding, and he nodded, his gruff voice ringing out over the crowd. 

Eleine sifted through the cold in her belly, fingers of mana seeking whatever few embers remained. 

_‘Leiney._

Eleine shook her head, scraping deeper. The child looked up at her from its position in her arms, its small face, gaunt and skeletal, wracking with shivers. 

She breathed in, felt the pressure build, tasted the ash sweet on her tongue, and blew out a gentle lick of flame. It brushed against the wood and seemed to puff out. But Eleine could feel it. The heat in the air, that pressed against her skin and pulled at her core. 

The refugees and onlookers jerked and cried out in surprise as the wood popped, flames bursting out the very centre of the pile. The fire writhed and hungered towards them, hunting the cold. 

The child settled in her arms. Eleine picked her way through the quiet crowd, striding up the steps to the platform before the hall. She stood above them all, child in arms, searching their worn faces. Again and again she scoured their visages, but there was no lurking Harper, no hidden Landen or Sarlaros. She shifted the youth into her other arm. “Welcome to Skyhold.”


	24. Respite?

“The mages, however, are slaves to Corypheus.” Eleine sighed, eyes hard on the pin impaling _Adamant Fortress_ on the war table. She let Leliana’s voice grate over her, absorbing without listening. The dim, murky light filtering through the windows cast shadows around the room, and Eleine considered lighting a torch. Of course, again, it was the ones that needed the saving, that she wanted to extend her hand to, that she could not. She remembered the way Erimond lifted his hand, a puppet master flexing the strings, and the mages, with their dead faces and bloodied eyes, mirrored his movement. Her fire agitated in her core. Oh, how she would delight over crusting Erimond’s bones to ash. 

“We’ve built the siege engines and readied our forces, Inquisitor,” Cullen rumbled, and Eleine’s eyes were tugged from the map to his face. “Give the word, and we march on Adamant.” She wondered if the others in the room were aware of the heat that swelled from her. 

“Before that merry jig,” Eleine drawled, eyes sweeping over to Leliana, “I am sure you’re aware I arrived with two young men.” 

The spymaster nodded her head from her position across the war table. “My men caught sight of them upon your return to Skyhold.” 

Eleine sucked on her teeth. “Before I left for the Western Approach Tamoren approached me about twin mages he knew. Odell and Oren, they call themselves.” Leliana’s eyes seemed black as she squinted at Eleine’s face. “I want to know who they are, where they came from, and how it is they are connected to Tamoren.”

Cullen cleared his throat, and her eyes swung back to him. “Are they truly a concern if they are young?” 

“Age has nothing to do with it,” Eleine and Leliana replied together, causing Eleine to shoot the woman a narrow look. “How old were you when you were taught the Game, Leliana?” 

“How young were you when you first killed, Eleine?” The spymaster returned, cocking her head to the side. Eleine gave her a dark smile. “Shall I also have my men turn their eyes on Tamoren?” Leliana’s expression smoothed out, her face giving nothing of her thoughts away. 

Eleine cocked a hip, eyes straying to the window. “No.” Even now, she could see his face in her mind, the way his eyes would follow her as she passed, the way he worked harder when she was around. It was not love, but something else. Something deeper, darker. Something familiarly bitter. “Have the Tranquil Clemence assist you and your men in whatever he is capable.” 

“Inquisitor?” Leliana questioned, brow raised. 

“So long as Tamoren sees his love in a precarious situation,” Eleine looked back to Leliana, “he will not dare do anything against the Inquisition.” 

Leliana smiled. “As you command, Inquisitor.”

“You have thirty-minutes to question the boys,” Eleine ordered, “but if I find them in a similar state as Mathias…” the room blistered with heat. “You will be the next brought before my throne.” Eleine could feel Josephine and Cullen looking between them in confusion, but she had no energy to speak of that time beyond her warning. She had no energy to think of the purpling lips and blood stained eyes. 

Leliana dipped her head, low. “Of course, Inquisitor. They are in your room, I believe?”

“Yes,” Eleine sighed, searching herself for the surprise she should feel at Leliana knowing this. It was not there. Leliana gave her one last nod, before swaying around the war table to the door. “Ah.” Eleine turned to Leliana as she was about to slip from the room. “I forgot. The twins do not speak.” Eleine smiled. “Good luck with the questioning.” 

Leliana returned it with a smirk of her own. “They don’t always need to.” And the woman left, leaving distaste acidic on Eleine’s tongue. She turned back to her remaining advisors. “We leave for Adamant the day after tomorrow. Be ready.” They each gave her steady looks in answer.

“If that is all,” Josephine lilted, “I have an ambassador from Orlais to speak to.” 

Eleine nodded. “Do enjoy yourself.” 

Josephine gave a wry smile, swaying her way to the door. “Yes, perhaps I will.” Eleine rubbed at her brow, following the woman, listening to Cullen’s steps behind her. 

She had not managed to speak to him privately since she arrived back into Skyhold, caught up with the refugees, having the child tended too and arguing with a few rankled nobles after they were kicked out of their accommodation to make room for the new additions. She had tried to explain, with as even a voice as she could manage, that being within the Inquisition, no matter your rank or contribution, will require sacrifices. And whether that meant you must share a room with a noble from Ferelden, or if you must house a soldier in your room, it did not matter. 

With him behind her now, drawing closer the slower she made her steps, Eleine warred with herself. She wanted to whip around, to yank him to her, and feel his heat against her again. But there was something off about him. She could feel it in the air, hear it in his unsteady steps. 

Her foot hovered over the seam between the war room and the hallway. In that moment’s hesitation, that second of time, her hand rose, unbidden, to the great oak door. Eleine stepped back into the room, hand shoving the door closed. She turned, finding Cullen’s confused eyes on her. 

Close as she was to him now, a mere arm’s length apart, she could see the rough stubble brushing his cheeks, the lines carving down from the corners of his eyes. The bags beneath those amber orbs. The tangle of his curls and the jitter of his hands.

She reached up a tentative hand, ghosting her fingertips down his cheek. “Cullen.” Something flickered in his eyes, and there was a wetness there she pretended not to see. Slight, oh so slight, he pressed his warm cheek flush to her hand. His eyes slipped shut, an unsteady breath leaving his nose, and she felt a fist squeeze her heart. Her chest, tight and sore, beat a heavy rhythm. “Cullen,” she worried again, voice dropping in concern. She stepped into his space, feeling his heat roll of him to breathe against her face and body. 

“If I may,” he said, voice rough and low, “I would like to speak with you when you have a moment, Inquisitor.” 

She eyed his face, worried. “Not now, Commander?” 

He cleared his throat, shaking his head. Those eyes opened just a little to reveal a slice of amber. She nodded her understanding, bringing her other hand up to his face, stomach turbulent with the ignorance of how to help him. There was that tug within her once again, a pull towards him, a need, as fresh and raw as the first time she had seen him. His fingers came up to clasp her elbow, just a gentle touch, weak. Her throat ached. 

The grey world outside cast terrible shadows across his face, elongating the lines of his exhaustion, and the pinched pain of his lips. Eleine brushed her thumb over the corner of his mouth, and the scar there. “I will see to the boys and Sven first,” she murmured, only to fill the heavy silence between them, “and then I will come to you.” 

“Thank you, Eleine,” he whispered back, and she swallowed past the anxiety the timber of his voice sent through her. She wondered why it was that his slight touch of her elbow felt as though he was clinging to her. Pushing up onto her toes, she soothed a kiss upon his lips. As she settled back down onto her soles, his head followed her, his forehead coming to press against hers. His other hand came up to hold her hip. He kissed her back, once, twice, the merest of touches. They were soft and slow and pained. She could feel something in him reaching out to her with every touch. 

She pulled back, brushing a curl out of his eyes. “I am glad to be back in Skyhold.” 

Cullen’s lips quirked up a touch into a smile. “It is good to have you back, Inquisitor.” He gave a little huff. “You made quite the entrance, as you always do.” 

She felt her own lips stretch into a smile. “At least I got your attention.” 

His eyes glittered. “That you did.” 

Her heart hurt with the memory of the distance that had yawned between them, the first time these words were spoken. And yet, it also thumped with the tight happiness upon realisation of the distance they had travelled together. That in this moment she was in his arms, taking his kisses. His care. 

That she was not quite as lost as she had been before. That she now had this embrace to return home to. And that of Sven’s and Dorian’s. 

Light cut through the window, a sliver of sun piercing through the clouds outside. For just a moment, Cullen’s face was not so shadowed, not so drawn. From the light thrown upon her own face, she could see herself in his eyes. The murky grey of her eyes where whiter, and seemed to glitter with the Silverite on her robes. The severe lines of her brows seemed softer, arched with beauty rather than nobility. She was happier than she could remember seeing herself before. 

She sought Cullen’s warm mouth just one more time, needing to feel his skin on her own. To remind herself of the truth of the moment. “I will not be long,” she promised him, “will you be in your office?” 

Cullen nodded, and the clouds covered the sun once more, his face dipping back into the grey of the room. She gave his cheek on last caress, before stepping back and returning to him his space. They walked into the throne room in silence, but she felt his fingers graze her lower back before they parted, she to her room, and he to his office. 

The corridor and steps to her bedroom seemed almost unreal. How long ago had it been since she’d walked this path? Always, it seemed as though the time away made Skyhold more a concoction of her imagination than a physical place. Eleine wearied her way up the steps, ready to stand by Odell and Oren, her periphery tuned for signs of betrayal. 

Leliana came out of her room, just as Eleine reached for the handle. They both jerked back in surprise, avoiding a clash by moments. “Inquisitor,” Leliana greeted, righting herself and stepping out of the room, closing the door behind her. 

Eleine rose her brow. “Murdered them already?” Eleine looked around. “Including the soldier I sent to guard them?” 

Leliana seemed not to appreciate her comment, by the quick tug down of her lips. “I do not believe I will be necessary in investigating them.” The woman stepped around Eleine, eyes on the closed door. “My spies will look into their past immediately.” 

Eleine eyed the woman. “What brought you to this conclusion after so little time?” 

“You will see for yourself,” Leliana lilted, giving a nod of her head, before prowling to the throne room. The clack of the door closing behind the her set Eleine hunting through her own door, and up the ancient steps. 

Even in the dim light, the stained glass windows sent coloured patterns glowing around the room, warming her desk and large bed. Eleine stilled at the top of her stairs. 

Nestled amongst a landscape of pillows and blankets, mouths open, hands clasped between them, Odell and Oren snored. Eleine huffed. Padding over to them, she considered their slack faces. Oren had the sprinkling of hair growing above his upper lip yet Odell seemed as young as ever. 

“Do not betray me,” she whispered, her fire stirring, “because I _will_ kill you.” They only breathed in reply, fingers twitching in each other’s hold. Unclasping the staff from her back, she braced it against the poster of her bed. Buckle by buckle, she took off her robes, leaving them crumpled on the floor. Too tired to bother wiping down her body, she sifted through the clothes in her drawer, pulling out the red suit. 

Dressed, body heavy and slow, she patted Odell on the back. “Sleep later.” Neither of the twins woke. “Wake up,” she insisted, giving Odell a shake. Odell rolled over, swollen eyes peeking open, and smacked his lips. “Thirsty?” she asked. The boy nodded, eyes clasping shut again. “Get the water yourself, there’s a pitcher on my desk.” He let out a little groan, and flopped off the bed onto the floor. Eleine snorted as he wormed his way across the room, limp arm reaching up for the water, fingers flailing around till they grasped hold of the handle. 

She shook her head as he drank straight from the pitcher, water cascading around the edges and down his front. “Ridiculous.” Turning back to the dead Oren, she leaned over, clasping his free fingers. Shaking his arm from the fingers to the root, she startled him awake. Bleary, swollen eyes blinked at her, and he snatched his hand back to his chest. “You need to be quick, or your brother will drown himself.” Oren’s eyes turned to moons and he snapped upright, head cracking around, only to find Odell slumped against her desk, soaked. The empty pitcher made a few lonely rolls across the ground towards them. Oren looked back at her, face pinched with question. Eleine snorted. “He’s your twin. You should know best what is wrong with him.” Rather than provide an answer, the young man collapsed back down onto the bed. 

“Sleep later,” she repeated, “I am going to see my son and I assumed—” Oren shot back up again, and by the sound of the thump to their left, Odell knocked his head on the side of her desk. “Quite,” she smirked, “hurry up, runts.” 

They were on their feet, all crinkled and rosy from sleep, in moments. There was a dull thud in her head that whispered terrible truths to her. It was the same being that squatted in her belly, tending her flames, keeping them lit and hungry. “Do not give me a reason to believe you intend to use him against me,” Eleine said, voice low and hard. They stilled beside her, hurt eyes on her face. “Whilst my spymaster has deemed you not a threat, after finding you unafraid of sleeping in an enemies bed,” Eleine cocked her head to the side, regarding them through slitted eyes, “I am not yet convinced. Meeting you is far more conceived than I am comfortable with. Tamoren’s involvement does not help you, either. So,” she strolled to the top of her steps, looking back at them, “I will be watching. Hurt my son, and I will leave your ashes to scatter in the wind.” 

Odell took Oren’s hand, both their lips pinched together, eyes misty. They nodded, and edged towards her with little, halting steps. Oren reached out first, his thin fingers clasping the front of her shirt. Four, big, rounded eyes pleaded with her. 

Though unease lingered in her stomach, she gave them stiff pats on the head. “Let’s go.” Eyes followed them as they entered the hall, the noble’s long looks on the ragged cuts of the boys hair and the rough material of their clothes. And yet many more eyes lingered on her. 

“Welcome back, Terror,” Varric grumbled from his place outside Solas’ rotunda. She grasped hold of the boy’s arms as they pulled to investigate him, and she could hear Varric’s laughter follow them from the hall. 

Eleine turned her eyes to the mountains as they left the throne room. The jagged rocks spiked into the sky, their bone tops hidden by swarming clouds. Skyhold sat in the arms of the titans, protected as much as it was caged. 

“Inquisitor.” A scout coming up the stairs clapped a hand to his chest, lowering his head. Eleine reclined her own in greeting, and drew Odell in close to her side so that the scout may pass. Finally, after a few twists and turns and grabbing passing soldiers by the front, demanding they tell her where he was, they came upon Sven’s assigned room. Leliana, it seemed, had organised him a place close to her own. She had only to take the stairs to Vivienne’s balcony, and storm past the mage before she could speak, and she was brought to the dim walkway. It still smelled of mould and rotting wood.

She stilled before the worn, ancient wooden door, eyes on the rusted handle. How many weeks had it been since she had seen him? What would she say? What would he say? She clenched her arms. The last she had seen of him was his sleeping body atop her bed, after she had revealed herself to him. There had been no goodbyes. 

Only his letter.

“Sven?” Eleine called, turning the handle and nudging the door open a slice. 

She froze. Her stomach clenched and dropped to the floor. 

Strong, large hands were at the base of Sven’s shirt, pulling it up, ripping it off. And the boy moaned, leaning forward, mouth opening beneath Art’s. His own hands dragged over Art’s bare chest, before clasping the young man’s straining biceps. 

There was sound caught in her chest, a bursting need to scream, to squeal, to yell. Her mouth was open, ready. The boys tumbled onto a small bed, limbs and bodies crashing against one another. She slammed the door closed, a strangled cry forced from her throat. 

Heat pumped through her cheeks, her skin flushed, and her sweat turned cold. She could only stare at the closed door, body stiff, feeling as though she were a stone carving. Odell popped up next to her, eyes searching her face, confusion drawing his brows together. Oren hovered over his shoulder, face mirroring his twin’s. 

The door creaked open a crack, and Art’s eye peered out at them, slim with suspicion, before catching sight of her and growing large and round. What small amount of his face she could see grew white and seemed to sweat. Eleine’s eyes fell down onto his still bare chest. It crashed through her too fast for her to understand what it was, before she was yelling “Put your shirt back on!” 

From inside the room she could hear Sven’s chocked shout. “ _Eleine_?” Art scrambled away from her, back into the room, leaving the door to slowly inch open, creaking every second. Sven’s shock bleached face goggled her from the bed while Art shoved his body into his inside-out shirt. “You put a shirt back on, too,” Eleine snapped at him, and he did, lunging across the bed to snatch it up. 

Behind her, there was an odd snuffling, a kind of snorting, breathy sound. Eleine looked over her shoulder to find Odell holding up a sagging Oren, both of them… laughing? Could one call it that? Their faces contorted into an expression one may wear whilst laughing, but they made no such sounds. Eleine felt like a bloated, dumb creature. She looked back at Art and Sven, standing side by side, looking contrite and embarrassed. 

She stood before them, feeling contrite and embarrassed. Eleine shuffled on her feet, scraping through her mind for something to say. She wondered what others had said to her when they had found her in a similar situation. Eleine remembered the stupefied expression on the head templar’s face when he had found his daughter with her when she was sixteen. 

A snicker burst from her mouth, and she covered it with a hand, before losing to laughter outright. Odell and Oren hung off her shoulders, still wheezing. 

“Sorry,” Eleine forced out, “sorry.” She stepped into the room, eyeing the space Sven had been assigned. There was one old, unstable bed in the corner, a small chest for clothes and an abundance of candles tucked against the walls and cluttering on shelves. “Only a thin blanket.” She frowned, then paused, eyes shifting onto the now red Art. “Not that warmth will be an issue for you at night.” 

“E- _Eleine_ ,” Sven complained, cheeks warm and rosy. Eleine could not help the swell of comfort in her chest at the sight of colour on him. Still, she remembered the pallid, murky flush of his skin during those many weeks. 

“I’m sorry,” she said again, “I was wrong to yell. And the last comment. And… not waiting for a reply. I…” she shook her head, “forget you’re not a child.” 

Art stepped forward, a hard look on his face, and she eyed him warily. “Your worship,” he began, hands clenched into fists, “Yeh ‘ave my word I’ll be good to—"

She held up a hand and Art took a step back, stance crumbling. “I know. I know, Art.” She sighed, hands clenching her arms. “You’ve been nothing but good to him since the moment you met him outside the chantry.” 

Art’s face stiffened with shock. “Yeh saw ‘at?” 

Sven looked at her with those eyes of his, so full of need and question, and she smiled. “I knew you would make the right choice.” 

And in a few short steps, he was in her arms, the same as that day in the circle. Clinging, shaking. Same as that night in the infirmary when he had woken. “Missed you,” he mumbled into her chest, and she nodded against his head, finding his hair brushing his ears, now. 

She took a few thick stands in between her fingers. “It’s grown.” She pulled him closer to her chest, closing her eyes. “I’m always gone for too long.” He gave a light nod. Sven leaned back and she opened her eyes to find him looking at the boys behind her. “Ah.” They parted, and she came to stand beside Sven, facing Odell and Oren. “Sven,” she motioned at her son, “this is Odell—” she pointed a finger to the wet one of the two, “and that is Oren.” Oren’s smile took up the entire lower half of his face. Sven looked up at her, mouth slightly parted in confusion. She shook her head in reply, at as much of a loss as to what to do with the boys as he. 

Oren came forward and grasped Sven’s hands, shaking them up and down in wild yanks, then began pointing to Sven’s chest and to her face, over and over. Odell popped up beside Oren’s shoulder, eye intent on Sven’s flabbergasted face, waiting for an answer. He did not blink, and Sven began to sweat. 

Sven looked from her to Art, then to the door. Eleine snorted. “Don’t run away.” She pulled his hands out of Oren’s. “You will hurt their feelings. They are asking if you really are my son.” 

“Oh,” Sven wiped his hands down his front, “they don’t… talk?” Eleine shook her head. “I- um…” His eyes skittered about the room. “Yeah,” he said at last, voice so low and quiet they almost could not hear it. “I am.” Odell burst around Oren, thumping on his chest and Oren bobbed his head in agreement.

“No you’re not also my sons,” Eleine snapped, “more like suspicious acquaintances.” Odell shook his head, cheeks growing red and Oren stomped his foot. “Get out of here,” Eleine flicked her wrist at them, “go see Tamoren.” And out the door they scrambled, thin limbs flying in the air. Eleine cocked a hip, sighing. “They have no idea where he is.” She smirked at Sven. “And they can’t ask for directions either.” 

“Should… should you go after them?” Sven halted, still reeling from the encounter.

Eleine laughed. “No.” 

Art came to stand on Sven’s other side, taking the boy’s hand. “I dinna ‘ear of new recruits.” 

“They’re not,” she sighed, eyes on the garden visible from the door, “they’re prisoners.” 

“Prisoners?” Sven asked, lines sprawled across his forehead. Art drew him in close to his side, and Eleine felt amusement war with discomfort. Maker, the boy was spoilt. 

“It’s safer to have them here where my blade can reach,” she said, making her way to the door, “and where my eyes can watch them.” 

“What did they do?” Sven came outside with her, looking over the stone rail at the boys running around the garden. 

“They know me,” Eleine breathed, “just as they know Tamoren.” She looked at Sven from the corner of her eye, seeing him shiver from the brush of cool breeze. “Why do you think that is?” 

Sven looked up at her, lips pinched together. “The… the circle?” 

Eleine hummed. Odell grabbed the hand of a passing Orlesian lady, gesturing with his arms and legs. The woman to squawked, wrenching her hand out and stumbling back, fan fluttering in front of her masked face. “Perhaps.”

“You don’t think so?” Sven held Art’s offered hand, pulling the young man against his back, using him as a shield from the cold. Eleine kept her eyes as far away from their forms as possible, not wanting to see the way Art nuzzled the side of Sven’s face, or the way Sven gave him a sneaky kiss on the cheek. Maker, she wouldn’t dream of being so publicly affectionate with Cullen. Now she had to wonder whether that was discomfort she was feeling or jealousy. 

“The boys, perhaps. Tamoren? No. There is something else there. Something… familiar. I know him too, but I do not remember from where or how.” She sighed, rolling her shoulders. “Either way, in the end it won’t matter. Regardless of how we know each other, so long as they cause me no problems, I will let them live.” She cocked her head at the young men looking at her with hesitant eyes. “Is that not reasonable?” 

“Aye, you worship, it is.” Art wound his arms tighter around Sven. 

Eleine flicked Sven’s nose. “I will visit later. I must speak with the Commander.”

A sudden, jagged smile cut across Sven’s face. “Oh, _speak_ , is it.” 

Eleine’s mouth dropped open. “My, my, so he has one kiss and all of a sudden my son is brave.” She reached over and messed up his hair. Art chuckled as Sven tried to squirm his way out of the cage of his arms, away from her hand. 

“You—” Sven gasped, “you did it to me!” 

Eleine gave a low chuckle. “Yes, but I am your mother. I can.” She shook her head, swaying away to the door leading to the ramparts. “Have fun, boys,” she called over her shoulder. 

A shriek from the garden below had her leaning over the edge of the thick stone railing. “Boys,” she snapped, startling Odell away from the Orlesian woman and Oren away from Blackwall. “Blackwall, can you please escort them both to the library?” The haired man gave her a few stunned nods, before directing the bouncing boys with a gruff voice and strong arms. 

She watched them leap around the man as they were corralled off to the throne room. As she stepped through the door onto the ramparts leading to the mage tower, she lost sight of them, and was tousled by a strong wind. The walk to Cullen’s office was quiet and undisturbed. The scouts and spies slinking past did not bother her, and there was no child clinging to her. For a moment, Eleine took a breath. 

As she came upon Cullen’s tower, she had a feeling she would need it. 

Eleine stood in the open doorway, the scent of him already coiling in her nose, alongside candle smoke and rain. He had not seen nor heard her. How many times had she watched him like this? Unseen, unheard. Hiding.

Dirt and dust carved lines around the stones of his office floor, the thick, corded rug leading to his desk doing little to help the aesthetic. His shelves were chipped and rotting in places, the ladder to his loft moulding from the damp. The hole that gaped in his ceiling whistled and rattled with wind. Day after day Cullen stood in this room, worked here, slept here. Never once had he complained. Eleine did not think he even cared. 

Maker, he was her red man. Cullen leaned over his mahogany desk, strong arms holding his up hunched form. Even from the distance between them, she could see the slight shakes rolling up and down his body. Even from where she was, she could see his pain. 

“Cullen.” Those tired, heavy eyes came up to her face. What did he see? What did she seem to him? Cullen looked back down to his desk, and the small wooden box there. 

Her heart thumped in her chest, the closer she drew to him. A mixture of dread and need heated and cooled her body in flushes. Then her eyes managed to tear themselves from that man, and fell to the carving of a chantry brother, a templar, on the inside of the wooden box. Her heart stilled, the blue liquid trapped within the glass vial sneering at her. 

“As leader of the Inquisition, you—” Cullen sighed, pulling himself upright and bracing his hands on his sword. “There is something I must tell you.”

Though a need, a deeper, sinister need, pumped through her, Eleine wrenched her eyes from the lyrium back to her pained man. 

“Anything, Cullen.”


	25. Templars And Mages

Cullen blinked, something flashing through his eyes too fast for her to understand it. “Right.” His stare snatched up her breath, for there was something there she did not recognise. Her stomach churned. “Thank you,” he breathed, a low note of relief in his voice. She was a few feet from his desk, and yet the wood seemed a wall between them. Cullen leaned back down, hands planting onto the surface, holding himself up on that barrier. His eyes returned to the wooden box, and her own followed, unbidden. 

Her eyes darted between the blue – Maker, so blue – and the strange contraptions around it, cushioned by red cloth. A crescent dagger, a pumping device and other un-nameable, twisted things. 

“Lyrium grants Templars our abilities,” Cullen began, and she wondered if it was the word _our_ that made her shiver, or if it was the dry, unaffected tone of his voice. She sought him in the words – yet found nothing. There was no mellow rumble, no sweet, buoyant man. Not even the ragged, fortitude of his timber. Nothing. “But it controls us as well.” She could no longer see his eyes, only his forehead, carved with lines. “Those cut off suffer—” he paused, a hushed nature stealing over his voice. “Some go mad – others die.” 

She felt as though she had crashed to the floor, as though her limbs had shattered upon his pallid stones. For a few moments she was certain her head had ruptured and spilt itself across the red of his rug. Yet still she stood, shaking, chilled, her fire wisping out in a puff of smoke. She could hear the words he had not yet said. They wound icy fingers around her heart, pouring cold through her veins. 

“We long ago secured a _reliable_ source of lyrium for the Templars here.” She remained unmoved by the slight stab of emotion in his voice, the jest that entered at his mention of her smuggling connections, for her ears hungered for what was coming, for— “But I… no longer take it.” She could not look away from his hunched shoulders. Fear like she had so seldom felt took grip of her core. Cullen did not look up, did not see the wretched twist of her face, the teeth cutting into her bottom lip, the ravines on her brow. 

“You stopped?” Her voice was a thousand feet away, quiet, falling from someone else’s mouth. It was dull, distant in her ears. She had not needed to ask. She knew, she knew, yet still she hoped and prayed. Let it be that the wan of his skin, the tight draw of it over his body was not true – not real, that he was not dying right there, two arm’s length in front of her. 

His office dripped from around her, till there was nothing but black caging her Cullen. “When I joined the Inquisition. It’s been months now.” 

_No_ , she wanted to say, _no_. She had allowed this— no, she had never known it. Missed it – not payed enough attention. All this time he suffered, and she had missed it. Had let it slip between her stained fingers, let him slip from her damaged arms. Hate, as familiar and hot as it always was, thrust into her heart, and she wanted to tear at her face, at her arms. Useless. She was useless. 

“Cullen.” Her voice was raising, her fingers reaching for him, “if this can kill you—” No. _Maker, no_. She wanted to shout, but was without the strength to do so. 

“It hasn’t yet.” He still did not look at her. There was all of Skyhold and the world between them, now. “After what happened in Kirkwall, I couldn’t.” He shifted his head to the side, and for the barest of moments she could see his eyes. The sweat carving trails down her back chilled at the dispassion in his expression. At the complete emptiness of emotion – of _him_. “I will not be bound to the order – or that life – any longer.” His voice grew in strength and volume. Eleine heard herself in those words, heard her own torment, her own past. He pulled himself back upright, his shoulders taught, yet proud, arms shaking, yet fingers clenched around the hilt of his sword. By the time his eyes met her own, there was nothing on her face of her pain. “Whatever the suffering, I accept it.” She was without words. Throat and chest hollow, she could only stare at him. 

The Cullen before her was distant, he was running, hiding from her. He wasn’t ready. 

“But I would not put the Inquisition at risk. I have asked Cassandra to… watch me. If my ability to lead is compromised, I will be relieved from duty.” His words were tight, like sharp plucks of a lute. Hurt stabbed into her stomach at the formality of his tone, at the distance. His eyes were a flat, dull tawny.

“Are you in pain?” She reached for him with her words.

“I can endure it.” 

Eleine stepped back. She was useless, indeed. 

“Thank you for telling me.” How was it her voice fell so even upon the room? “I respect what you’re doing.” How was it these were her words? There were thousands of needles of pain in her body, and yet her face felt as smooth and stiff as stone. Her legs were mushy and weak – yet not a single tremble moved her. 

“Thank you, Inquisitor.” He had no need of _her_ , of _Eleine_. He needed the Inquisitor. He had asked the Inquisitor to come, and she had. So there would be no warmth in her voice, no compassion moving her body. She would do nothing to force him to acknowledge his need for it, nor his vulnerability. 

He was not ready. 

“The Inquisition’s army must always take priority. Should anything happen… I will defer to Cassandra’s judgement.” So he said, and so he asked her to leave. 

“As you desire, Commander.” 

And so she did.

Her back felt cold as she turned from him, and she knew his eyes were not on her. 

Thunder cracked overhead, hunting her as she left his office. The roiling, ashen clouds threw such a pall over the courtyard, scouts had begun to light torches. Though the scent of a storm oppressed Skyhold, bearing down upon them with the increasing winds, the rain had yet to come. 

From the elevated ramparts the courtyard seemed the site of a collision of wagons. Eleine strayed far enough from Cullen’s office, and caught her flagging body on the crumbling balustrade over-looking the mess. Mobilisation for Adamant had already begun, and her people scurried across Skyhold, bursting in and out of rooms, bearing barrels of fruit and vegetables, and bread and smoked meats. Eleine drew a trembling hand across her brow, finding it wet with sweat. Others pulled wagons of gleaming weapons and armour behind them, waving people out of the way, sweating.

In the training grounds, men and women sparred, mages standing alongside those of blade and arrow. She crooked her elbows, holding up her lolling head. Commander Helaine strode through the ranks, mouth snapping out words Eleine could not hear. For a moment Adan streaked around the training army, vials gleaming in his hands, healing potions glaring alongside Lyrium. 

A short run, and she would find Cullen bent over his desk, suffering alone. He would be reading one missive after another, issuing orders, and shaking. Perhaps his eyes would spark with that warmth of his, or perhaps they would remain as flat as they had been. But the tightness in her chest and in her stomach knew, that she would not be welcome there, now. 

Her teeth chattered. 

She’d never considered the plight of Templars, nor had she ever cared. They were all willing, she had believed, to be the monsters they were. She’d been wrong, been blinded by her anger, and hate, and the monster inside of her. The need and call for violence that birthed her fire. 

She blinked, and her eyes found the world before her once again. Eleine moved on legs not governed by her mind, and found herself in the courtyard, taking barrels out of the hands of an elven scout, mouth opening with a voice she could barely hear, barking orders to the closest messengers. She let the day drip from her hands. 

Night stole all lingering light, the sky continued to growl, and yet still, the rain did not come. As she pained her way to her room, she sent a servant to Cullen’s office with dinner and snacks, knowing he would not have left to get his own, nor would he be sleeping tonight. 

“Do not tell him I sent you,” she had told the girl, “no matter what he asks. Say you do not know who it was. Say you’re sorry, but you cannot remember.” 

Alone on her balcony, Eleine clutched herself against the biting chill, ears hurting from the thunder that seemed to crash down upon the mountains. Silver lightning cut across the sky in bursts, illuminating the world around her for seconds at a time. 

He would not die. _It controls us_. He could not die. _Those cut off suffer_. Not him, not her Cullen. _Some go mad – others die._

Not Cullen Rutherford, Commander of the Inquisition. 

 

Sat at her desk, with a lighted candle beside her, Eleine organised her pouches. The heavens continued to resound with cracks and booms, seeming to shake the ceiling. She had only to restock her potions and poisons, now, and she would be prepared for war. Fingers grazing over the crystal blue vials of what Lyrium she had, Eleine tucked them into the furthest corner of the leather pouch, covering up the blue with rows of red and deep purple. 

Last, she slipped in the charred diary Tamoren had given her, all her notes and messages trapped within its pages. Leaning back on her ornate chair, Eleine let her head fall back. Maker, there was such an itch within her, such a thumping need, demanding she check up on Cullen. But still, she kept herself planted in her room. He was not ready. But perhaps she could see he for a moment, only to ensure he was alive. And well. As well as he could be. 

Eleine groaned, struggling back upright, to lay her head down on her desk. The wood was cool beneath her cheek. 

She would go for a moment, she needed to ask him about the ratio of mages to soldiers he had organised, after all. She would not go. She would stay here as he needed her to. 

She had to go. To do her work – there really was no other choice for her. Her responsibilities demanded it. And if he asked her to leave again, she would. Straight away. She would not try to touch him, not try to talk to him about it. She would keep her mouth shut. 

Eleine knocked her head against the desk.

On hesitant legs she stood, but every step to her stairs and out her door, the stronger her strides. There was nothing to do about it but see him. She had to tell him, if nothing else, that whatever he could need of her, she would do.

Though her hands shook, Eleine took the path through Solas’ rotunda to his office. But he was not there. Empty, barren, the room seemed, without his silhouette of red. 

“Ah,” a scout popped into his room, missive in hand, “Inquisitor.” The woman came in and left the note on Cullen’s desk. “If you are looking for the Commander, he’s gone to speak with Seeker Pentaghast.”

“Where?” Eleine joined the scout and left Cullen’s room. 

“The Smithy, I believe, your worship.” Eleine nodded, and mumbled her thanks, before hurrying off down the stairs to the courtyard. 

The journey to the blacksmiths took longer than she expected, as she navigated the clanking crowds, swarms of shouting soldiers and rumbling wagons. Stepping up to the door, hand outstretched, Eleine froze. Cassandra’s voice cut through the din of the courtyard and the dull hammering from within the blacksmith’s – sharper than she had heard the woman sound in months. 

“You asked for my opinion and I’ve given it. Why would you expect it to change?” Eleine’s hackles rose at the tone of voice, and she pressed herself against the door, fingers clenching the handle. 

“I expect you to keep your word.” Was that… Cullen? It could not be. That anger was a slap against her heart. “It’s relentless, I can’t—”

“You give yourself too little credit,” Cassandra bit back, and Eleine wavered, beginning to pull away from the door. 

“If I’m unable to fulfil what vows I kept, then nothing good has come of this.” Eleine stilled at the ragged sound of his voice. “Would you rather save face than admit—” Not another word. She could not hear another venomous word spoken from those lips. She burst into the room, silencing him. They stood, mouths open, by a cracking fireplace. Even through the dim and cramp of the room, Eleine could see the haggard lines of Cullen’s body. The side of his face turned towards the fire was bathed in an orange glow, and the thick stubble on his cheeks, and the deep lines of his face were exposed.

Both of their eyes were wide upon her face, and for a moment she saw Cullen’s expression twist. Then she blinked, and it was impassive once more. Cassandra crossed her arms, face smoothing out in a look of triumph. She turned back to Cullen, as though her point had been made, but the man’s shoulders were stiff, his hands clenched. Cullen looked away from Eleine. There was no greeting, no words spoken, nothing. He simply began to make his way to the door, brushing past her. 

Her heart hit the floor. Warmth drained from her cheeks, regardless of the heat that swelled in the room. As he took a step past her, there was the slightest of whispers. 

“Forgive me.”

His scent lingered in the air beside her, mingling with the odour of metal and oil.

“And people say _I’m_ stubborn,” Cassandra hurled after him, “this is ridiculous.” The door slammed behind him, and Eleine flinched. She turned on the Seeker, unable to speak. The woman sighed. “Cullen told you that he’s no longer taking Lyrium?” 

“Yes,” Eleine forced out, mouth stale, “and I respect his decision.” 

There was a spark in Cassandra’s eyes. “As do I.” The woman’s face hardened. “Not that he’s willing to listen.” The woman considered her face with squinted eyes. “Cullen has asked that I recommend a replacement for him.” The room swayed, and Eleine wondered if she was falling. The fire beside them was not enough to warm the ice in her veins. “I refused,” Cassandra assured her, eyes softening on her face. “It’s not necessary. Besides, it would destroy him. He’s come so far.” 

Eleine needed to sit down. “Why didn’t he come to me?” Her voice sounded small, and was almost lost amongst the slam of hammers against metal resounding around the room. 

“We had an agreement long before you joined us,” the woman answered, voice growing softer than even her eyes, “as a Seeker, I could evaluate the dangers.” She paused. “And he wouldn’t want to… risk your disappointment.” 

Eleine bit her lip. “Is there anything we can do to change his mind?” The inquisition needed him. _She_ needed him. 

Cassandra had a slight smile on her face. “If anyone could, it’s you.” She turned to face the fire, and Eleine saw the woman’s fingers clench her arms. “Mages have made their suffering known, but Templars never have.” Eleine followed the woman’s gaze to the hungry flames. “They are bound to the order, mind and soul, with someone always holding their Lyrium leash.” Heat flushed through her at the thought of the Chantry doing to Cullen what it did to her. Captives, they’d both been captives. “Cullen has a chance to break that leash,” Cassandra continued, unaware of the rising temperature in the room, “to prove to himself – and anyone who would follow suit – that it’s possible. He _can_ do this.” Cassandra turned back to look at her, face lined with that grim strength of hers. “I knew that when we met in Kirkwall. Talk to him. Decide if now is the time.” The woman gave her an even stare, and pivoted on her heel to leave. 

“It was only yesterday,” Eleine called after her, “only yesterday he told me. How could he have deteriorated so fast?” 

The Seeker stopped, and looked at Eleine over her shoulder. “He’s concerned in light of the coming siege. Too much is at stake. Our lives.” The woman gave her a heavy look. “Your life.” And with that, the woman left her to the tumultuous heat of the room. Eleine stumbled over to the fireplace, holding herself up on the rusted grate. 

There was such noise in her head, such a confusion of emotions slamming through her body. _Die_ , whispered in her ear. _Suffer_. She shook her head, knocking a fist against her forehead. _It would destroy him_. Could she allow him to kill himself? Could she even consider not allowing him his freedom? 

Eleine buried her head in her hands, sinking to the floor, regardless of any onlookers. The pound, pound, of the hammers beat on, matching the clang in her head. Maker, she wanted to burn the Chantry till nothing remained but white flakes churning in the air. What it had done to the both of them was beyond repair. On shaky legs she stood and left the room. 

The courtyard’s crowd swarmed around her, murky light forcing itself through the agitated clouds. She pushed through them, some jumping out of the way, others not reacting fast enough. Up the stairs she hurried to him. Whatever he chose, for it was his choice, she could not allow him to give up his position as the Inquisition’s Commander. She could not. 

His door was open, beckoning, and her strides lengthened, her blood pumping and pumping. Her foot crossed the threshold, and there was a flash before her face. Eleine yanked herself back, air rushing past her, feeling the blood pour from her face to her toes. Wood splintered onto the door, right where she had been, a great slam resounding around the room. Glass shattered upon the wood and stone, wretched blue trickling towards her boot. 

“Maker’s breath!” Cullen cried, and she looked up at him, mouth open. “I didn’t hear you enter, I—” he began to plead, but he shook his head, lowering his jaw, eyes hiding from her. “Forgive me.” Her heart was yanked out of her chest at the shame colouring his face, pulling his shoulders in. In small steps, he pained his way around his desk. 

Maker, her chest felt so tight. “Cullen.” Eleine took a step towards him, her fingers twitching by her side, desperate to curl into his locks, to pull his head down onto her chest, so that she may ease away his pain. “If you need to talk…” All she could offer him, the only amount of personal inflection she could allow. Who did he need? The Inquisitor, surely. Surely not herself. 

Cullen’s eyes warmed, just that little bit. “You don’t have to—” 

She could see it, the way his leg buckled, how his face lost colour. How he fell. She could not move to catch him, there was no time. Cullen’s hand came out, and he braced himself on his desk. Maker, the sound that came out of him. The groan, the undiluted pain. 

In that slight moment, she has seen his form crumble, seen the façade shatter.

Eleine saw the raw truth of his suffering. 

She took steps towards him, slow with shock, but he waved her off, turning his face from her. 

“I never meant this to interfere.” He looked so worn, so broken down. It was an apology, and filled her with heated anger. How dare he apologise for this, for what he had no control over, for the affliction forced upon him? She swallowed the ash that infested her mouth. 

She came as close as she thought he’d allow. An arm’s length away, she could move to catch him were he to stumble again. “Are you going to be alright?” 

His head came up immediately, his eyes flattening out. “Yes.” Then pain flickered across his face, and it came slamming down once again. Cullen sighed. “I don’t know.” He yanked himself up, throwing his shoulders back. His eyes remained molten amber, tumultuous and agitated. “You asked what happened to Ferelden’s circle.” Yes. She had. Months ago, when she was something else, when they were something else. He was looking her in the eye, and suddenly, she felt as though she really did not want to know. “It was taken over by abominations.” 

Like a rock falling from a high place, the words pounded into her heart. _Abominations._ Fear came up to clasp her heart. 

“The Templars – my _friends_ – were slaughtered.” 

Her legs were weak, Maker, so weak. The hate in his eyes, it was hate for her and for her people. His breathing was so ragged, and she could hear the tears coming to choke his throat. He turned from her, retreating to his window. His back was so large, yet so hunched. He put his head in his hands, words staring to fall from his lips, only for him to stop and silence. 

When it came, she wished she had kept that amulet. “I was tortured.” She would have. She would have torn apart the fabric of time to undo what was done to him. She was crying, and thankful he was no able to see. Hot, angry the tears fell. She felt blood well in her palms from where her nails cut through her skin. 

“They tried to break my mind, and I—” he gave an empty chuckle and her fire thrashed. “How can you be the same person after that?” he demanded. He shook his head, and she scraped the tears off her cheeks. “Still, I wanted to serve.” He turned to look at her, his eyes so dark. “They sent me to Kirkwall.” To the cesspool of the fight between mages and templars. Of course they did. Of course they fucking did. “I trusted my Knight-Commander.” His words were coming fast and harsh now, pouring from his lips as though they had gathered in the well of his mouth for years. “And for what, hm?” He jittered by the window, arms whipping up in the air in slashed, hopping from foot to foot. Her fear of mages ended in _madness_.” There was a pause, and he settled, his whole body stilling. She could see only the side of his face. “Kirkwall’s circle fell. Innocent people died in the streets.” He faced her, now, eyes searing into her own, demanding. “Can’t you see why I want nothing to do with that life?” 

She could feel her whole chest move with her thundering heart. If only he knew. She too ran from what she had been, what the circle had made her. It was pushing up her throat, a thousand truths and confessions, about to spill. Spill out. “Of course I can, Cullen.” She stepped toward him. “I—” 

“Don’t.” Eleine stepped back, swallowing everything. Cullen began to pace. “You should be questioning what I’ve done.” She did not care. He could not have done worse to her people, than she did to his. “I thought this would be better – that I would regain some control over my life.” He cut back and forth in front of her. “But these thoughts won’t _leave me_.” His voice was raising and growing ragged. He was crumbling, crumbling, before her. “How many lives depend on our success? I swore myself to this cause.” She could see him shaking, and anchored herself on spot, lest she capture those thrashing arms with her hands, and pull him to her. “I will _not_ give less to the Inquisition than I did the Chantry.” And it broke through. Cullen whipped around, fist slamming into his bookcase. Books tumbled from their place, scattering pages and notes across the ground. “I should be taking it!” he yelled. Then as quickly as the energy came, it went. “I should be taking it,” he breathed. 

Damn it all, she did not care about the Inquisition. It could burn – the whole world could burn – so long as he was happy. And well. “This doesn’t have to be about the Inquisition,” she said. She came to stand before him, facing that furious expression on his face with nothing but steel within her. “Is this what _you_ want?” 

Cullen exhaled, the fight leaking from him. “No.” Eleine could not stop her body from moving towards him. His heat radiating from his front, bathing her front. “But…” he looked up at her, pulling himself upright. He stayed close, and she felt tension begin to ease form her stomach. “These memories have always haunted me – if they become worse, if I… cannot endure this…” 

Eleine steadied him with her hand on his heart. “You can.” He was strong.

And she would make him stronger.

He would have her strength, her fire. She would carry whatever it was he needed her to till the day he made it to that place of acceptance. 

His eyes did not leave her own. They sought something in her expression, hungry, needy. He found it. Cullen sighed, eyes falling to the ground, before he seemed to brighten, to inflate once again. “Alright.” There was the slightest smile on his face, despite the bags beneath his eyes, despite the lines carving across his forehead. Still, he pulled back from her, and she knew he needed more time. 

Eleine stepped away. Cullen returned to his desk, and she caught sight of his chair, pushed off into the corner beside his window. Books and papers stacked atop it, seeming to waver on the precarious edge of the chair. He had been punishing himself for his weakness. He had forced himself to stand, thrashing his body to pull through it’s suffering. 

Silly, strong man. Eleine brushed past him, feeling the heat of his eyes on her the whole while. She picked up the books, and deposited them on the ground beside the chair. Then, she lifted the chipped seat, and placed it before Cullen. 

She met his gaze. “Rest, Cullen. I will see you before we depart tomorrow.” Slight, ever so slight, she placed her hand on his forearm. 

He did not respond as she shook her way to the door. “I expect my Commander to be well rested for the march,” she ordered, sending him a look over her shoulder. 

Cold enveloped her, the moment she left his office for the lonely stretch of the ramparts. 

Had it ever been his appearance that had drawn her to him? Or had it always been his scars, his mind, as unstable as her own? And something more, something else. A shared sin, a shared war against the other. A containment in their institutions. They had both been betrayed by that which should have sheltered them, protected them, supported them. 

They were one and the same, two sides of the same coin. 

Eleine froze as something splattered against the top of her head. Looking up, she saw the second drop before she felt it. Wet, cold, it sprayed off her cheek into smaller pieces. And so the rain came to wash the world clean. 

All she could see was herself as the abominations that defiled Cullen. She could see herself among them, taunting, hunting for blood. She had been everything he feared and hated. 

Of course he had despised her kind. Detested magic, detested the power it gave them. 

One day he would hate her too, for everything she had done and everything she had hidden from him. 

And she could not fault him for it. 

She had been the monster Cullen feared – and he had been the monster she feared. 

Maker almighty. 

“Inquisitor,” a messenger called, “you are needed by Lady Josephine in her office.” 

“Yes,” Eleine breathed, eyes still on the heavens, “I’m coming.” 

She wondered if that warm trail burning down her cheek was the rain, or tears.


	26. More Than I Deserve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for how long this has taken! My goodness. I'm back at uni, partway through the semester, dying. I promise quicker updates are in sight! I hope you enjoy this one and that you've all been well xx 
> 
> As always, much love! <3

“Inquisitor,” a voice called, nasal and familiar. 

Eleine clicked her tongue, dropping the apple back into the barrel of fruit she had been inspecting. She nodded to the tan messenger in front of her. “Inform Josephine the rations are ready as well.” 

“Your worship.” The messenger bowed, before scurrying off across the busy courtyard. Eleine turned around to find Adan in all his stuffy, wretched glory, haloed by the rising sun behind him. 

“Adan,” she greeted, cocking a hip and rubbing a hand up her goose-bumping arm. The storm clouds had passed during the night, whisking away to another sky, to drench some other land. Early morning light, soft hues of pink and orange, came to warm the cold skeleton of Skyhold. Horses snorted and reared behind Adan, soldiers clanking and moaning as the dawn chased the Inquisition out of the castle. 

“Take these.” He thrust three vials at her, the delicate crystal flasks swirling with a deep purple liquid. 

She rose her brow. “Looks nasty. I must imperiously decline.” 

Adan seemed to inflate, his shoulders bloating and rising, his chin climbing, eyes looking down upon her. And yet, with a haggard breath, he punctured, shoulders curling in towards his chest. With his chin tucked down, he shook his head. “I had never intended… to hurt you in this way.” 

Eleine curled her lip, taking a step away from him, stomach stone within her skin. A million cutting words pressed against her lips, sharp little daggers, to be spat at him. Instead, she swallowed them, too tired to keep this hate in her heart, when it already held so much. This perhaps, was a wound she could allow to heal without a scar. 

Eleine sighed, reaching out to pry the vials from his fingers. “I know, you stupid man.” 

Adan looked up at her, the corner of his mouth jerking upward in a smirk. “Go destroy those miserable bastards.” 

Eleine sighed, eying her people preparing behind him. How many would she never see again? How many faces would be lost, that she had never even knew stood among them? She twirled the concoctions around her hands, the thick substance bubbling. “What horrid thing have you brewed?” Would their deaths count as another strike against her soul?

Adan’s smirk turned into a wicked grin. “Seen you working with those special swords of yours – thought you could do with a little extra sting.” 

Eleine hummed. “Poison?” 

Adan plucked one from her hands, gazing into it with a crazed light in his eyes. “Delirium Mist. Slosh some of this around…” 

“Ahh.” Eleine shook her head, accepting it back from Adan and slipping them into her already bulging pouches. “Terror, screams and destruction?”

Adan rubbed his hands together. “Only the worst for you, Inquisitor.” 

Eleine snorted, walking to his side. Her eyes slipped back to the chaos of her Inquisition and she squeezed his shoulder, drawing close to his ear. “Watch out for Sven.” 

“Always do, you irritant,” Adan said. He turned around to follow her gaze. For a while he didn’t say anything, and when the words came, they were roughened and ragged. “Be safe.” 

She eyed his strong nose and drawn brows from her periphery. “It takes a lot to kill me.” 

Adan cleared his throat, rolling his shoulders. “If not—” he shook his head. “If not for the Inquisition’s sake, come home for Sven.” 

She felt a hundred years of age settle over her bones. “I will.” 

Adan turned away from her, leaving only his back for her to read. “When you’re gone, you’re all the blighted kid will talk about.” Eleine clutched her fingers around her arms, keeping stinging eyes on Adan’s form. “Don’t let ‘im down, aye?” And then he was gone, robes blending into milling mages and Inquisition messengers. 

She took a moment to rub at her heavy brow, fingers shaking. Then, letting out a serrated breath, she joined the fray of mobilising soldiers. They were to leave in an hour, and there was still things to organise. Before she could get herself ass-deep in some complication, however, a voice cut through the noise, straight to her heart. 

“Eleine.” She stiffened at the volume, turning around to find the source of the shout. There, upon the ramparts next to his office, was Cullen, leaning over the stone railing. At this distance the expression on his face was lost to her. He stepped back and she could no longer see him, but she felt his call in the thump of her blood. She followed, swaying her way through the readying soldiers. Each step up the stairs she took to him, her heart slammed against the inside of her chest. 

As she crested the stairs to the wind tousled rampart, it was to find Cullen’s silhouette made divine by the morning light. Eleine’s stomach lurched. It was in some parts ridiculous, to have such a heated fear spring through her veins, striking her cheeks. But still, even after the hours in between their talk, Eleine could see his face when he told her of what happened. Of who had hurt him. Mages. 

Her. 

But not her.

Eleine felt like slinking back down those steps, hiding from him, hiding from his finding out. 

It had not been her who had murdered his friends and tortured him, but if she had been there, if he had been in _her_ circle… she’d have hated him as much as any Templar. She’d not have seen the compassion that made his hands so gentle, or the dedication to others that drove him to such relentless self-destruction. 

She would only have seen a monster, and the thought of him knowing that, knowing the creature she had once been… 

And yet that back beckoned to her, those broad shoulders an expanse of warmth and comfort she could no more turn from than her own past.

He seemed to have heard the scuffle of her boot upon the top step, for he turned to face her. The heat in her cheeks changed, her heart shifting from its dull throb of fear, to a pound of relief. She had never seen his face so relaxed, so unlined, so soft. Perhaps it was the light, that gentle glow of the morning, that smoothed out his chest and face. Perhaps too, it was the chill in the air that plucked those cheeks and nose into their blush, suffusing his face with light and life. His hair and the stubble on his cheeks seemed to glow gold in the pink sun, and for a long few moments her mouth dried at the gleaming amber of his eyes. 

“I wanted to thank you,” he rumbled, voice even and strong, “when you came to see me…” He caught on his words at her smile, eyes dripping from her face to dance around the ramparts. “If there’s anything, ah…” He sighed, one of his hands going up to rub the back of his head. She felt her smile grow wider at the gesture. He looked off to the mountains to their right, cheeks pinkening further. “This sounded much better in my head.” 

Eleine drew as close to him as she believed he would allow, feeling each step chase away the cold of the morning just that little bit more. Now, an arm’s length away, his spiced scent coiled around her on the breeze. 

“I trust you’re feeling better?” she asked, stomach clenching in a moment’s hesitation to dip too far into the pool of what happened only a night ago. 

“I…” he hesitated, and then his eyes returned to her, and for the first time in what felt like months, she saw his truest smile. Small, relaxed, it pulled at the laugh lines around his eyes, and lifted the heaviness of his brow. “Yes.”

She took a step closer to him, heart in a vice. “Is it always that bad?” 

“The pain comes and goes,” he admitted, eyes not wavering from hers, “sometimes I feels as though I’m back there.” His voice hushed, and he averted his gaze once more. “I should not have pushed myself that far that day.” 

Eleine wanted to scoff. _Of course,_ she wanted to say. The memory of his chair, shoved off to the side, burdened with more work, swarmed in the forefront of her mind. Always, always he thrust himself into his work as though he owed the world his soul. Silly man. Silly, lovely, man. Instead, she let out a weak exhalation, and tried to push all of her heart into her eyes. “I’m just glad you’re alright,” she breathed. 

He gave her another quick, little smile. “I am.” Turning to face their army of mountains, he placed his gloved palms on the stone rampart. “I never told anyone what truly happened to me at Ferelden’s circle.” Eleine came to stand beside him, closer now, feeling his heat shove away the last of the cold. “I was… not myself after that. I was angry.” Eleine could not take her eyes of him, off the weight in his eyes, the pain, the _shame_. “For years that anger blinded me. I’m not proud of the man that made me.” 

Pound, pound, pound. Her heart throbbed in its bone cage. For a moment, she no longer saw him on the ramparts. In his place, there was her. Younger, smaller, underfed and angular. Her cheeks were plush with youth, but hollowed with malnutrition. Blood sprayed down her front, curving from one smoky eye to the cut of her chin. 

Eleine looked away, and by the time her eyes returned to the spot, Cullen was back, his great shoulders warm with his fur mantle. 

“The way I saw mages” he was saying, “I’m not sure I would have cared about you.” In what felt like a year, he turned to face her, eyes drawn in horror and shame. “And that thought sickens me,” he breathed. 

No. It was _her_ who felt sick. Sick at the truth they both shared, sick at the fear of who she had been, sick at the realisation that she was no longer that person. If they had met years earlier, when she was in the circle, and he was still a Templar, the would have… Perhaps even… yes, perhaps he too would have fallen to that horror that lurked within the circular halls of the mage tower. Perhaps he would have tried to protect his brothers and sisters in the order, without knowing or caring for their sins, and would have died with them. 

She would have… 

She wanted to tell him, to confess alongside him, what she had been. What she had done. But it was too soon, too early, and she could not break this between them yet. Maybe even with the truth she would destroy this tentative trust he was extending to mages. He seemed to believe she was better than those who had destroyed him, and she could not tell him that the one he chose to trust in now, was worse even than those who had fallen prey to their gifts. 

“Now I can put some distance between myself and everything that happened.” Cullen smiled, some of the pain leaking from his eyes. “It’s a start.” 

No. All she could do now was to leave him with no doubt of how much she cared for him. She would show him the depth of all her longing for him, and the extent to which meeting him in that war room had changed her. So that when it was time for him to know, perhaps a part of him would be soothed with the knowledge that at least he had been loved. 

“For what it’s worth—” because perhaps her word wasn’t worth much at all, “I like who you are now.” 

Maker, he should not have looked so surprised. Slowly, he turned to her, eyes wide, mouth hesitant. “Even after…” 

Eleine really did scoff now. What had he done? Thrown a few harsh words at some mages, thought ill of her people, chosen to favour mad templars above innocent victims? All nothing in comparison to herself. He would see that one day. 

“Cullen.” She shook her head, stepping into his space, hand coming up to hold his arm. Perhaps he would find her sincerity in her touch, if not her words. “I care about you.” Could he hear the way her heart was in the air, raw in her words? His face was so close to hers now, bright with joy, eyes glistening with unshed tears. “You’ve done _nothing_ to change that,” she promised. For a moment his surprised breath brushed against her face, and they pressed together. A stolen second of warmth, of touch. Closer, his face dipped to hers, closer they drew. His nose was a hairsbreadth away from hers. 

Then she stepped back, every nerve on her body screaming at the distance. Such sweet, hopeful eyes found their way into her own, and she felt every part of her hurt. Maker she wanted him in her arms. But she couldn’t, not yet, he wasn’t quite ready yet. 

“What about you?” he asked, and Eleine cocked her head in question, spikes of fear thrilling through her veins. “You have troubles of your own,” he clarified, “how are you holding up?” 

Eleine relaxed, turning to face the mountains rather than the soft care on his face. Her limbs buzzed with their proximity, their almost touches. “It has all been… a lot,” she confessed, “years ago… this was never what I imagined for myself. Surely you know, Cullen.” She looked to him then, hesitant, wary. “I am not the sort of woman suited to this. To… _giving_ , so much of myself to others.”

Cullen laughed. A full, heavy chested laugh. Eleine was startled, turning to face him completely. His head tipped back a bit as he continued and she watched on in confusion which mixed with relief at the sound. The moment he calmed down, he gave her a contrite glance from underneath his brows, perhaps seeing the disgruntled look on her face. “Forgive me,” he chuckled, “but I am always surprised to hear how you think of yourself.” 

Eleine forced a weak smile on her face. “I fear you have always thought better of me than I deserve.” He needed to know, to understand. 

His eyes stilled and hardened, humour roughening away. The look he placed upon her made her shift. “You always think so little of yourself.” A rush of air made a mess of his curls. 

Eleine gave him a wan smile, but let the moment go with the wind. “Thank you, Cullen.” 

The yelling and clatter of the courtyard swam through the thick air between them. “Are you… ready?” Cullen asked. 

She raised a brow at him. “Of course.”

He chuckled, coming a little closer to her. “Of course.” 

Eleine sighed, letting her eyes rake up his body one last time, inspecting his face for hidden lines. Once satisfied, she stepped into his space, reaching up to scrape the tips of her fingers down his cheek. “Are you?” she breathed. 

Cullen’s eyes lingered on her lips, before returning to her eyes. “I am.” 

Eleine smiled. “Good.” Before she had time to breathe in, he was there, lips seeking her own, cupping them with a trembling tenderness. At the touch, Eleine wanted to press fully against him, to breathe in his warmth. But another tremor went through his body. Perhaps it had been pleasure, relief. But there was no way for her to know, without reminding him what else it could be. 

She stepped back. “There is nothing you have done, or could do, that will change how much I care for you, Cullen.” Without giving her eyes the time to take in his reaction, she turned, and left. 

 

Eleine prowled around the encampment, checking up on their sentries and ensuring they knew their shifts. Even after only one day of travelling through the mountains around Skyhold, her people looked tired. It was different, slower, moving in such a large group. But they would adjust. They had done so before. 

The snow glittered in the torch light, as she left the last sentry to her post, and Eleine took a moment to survey the night-sky. 

Saying goodbye to Dorian and Sven had been… 

She was unused to leaving things behind. Dorian had been less than pleased that she refused to let him come along. The last thing she was willing to experience was worrying about his safety whilst in the midst of demons and Wardens. It was one thing to go against bandits or Red Templars, but a siege, the likes they had not yet seen as an institution? 

No. Solas, Cassandra and Varric were a much better choice. They were… expendable. 

Varric less so than the others. But the sting would be nothing compared to the loss of Dorian. 

Murmurs of laughter and crackling fires kissed her ears, and she continued to sway her way back to the camp. Contrary to the edged winds that keened through the trees and mountains, the clearing they had occupied swelled with heat from the multitude of campfires. Warmth washed against her the moment she stepped amongst her lounging people. She smirked at the high morale and good humour they forced to their faces, past the cold fear in their eyes. The stupid ones were truly laughing, drunk on foul smelling wine that they swilled around their mouth, staining their lips. 

A few called to her, having courage enough to ask her to join them while their comrades shifted in discomfort. The few Templars they had in the area purpled. Eleine cocked her head, weighing up how much she was required to reply. She would love to ignore them, but one more lecture from Josephine about relations with her people… 

“I have things to discuss with our Commander, forgive me.”

The mage she addressed deflated, her drunk happiness as fragile as stupors always were. Rather than wait for the morose reply, Eleine did as she said she would, despite having not planned on seeing Cullen for a while yet. She wasn’t sure if he was fully recovered, enough for her to be in his space again. Nor was she certain how much longer she could stop herself from seeking another kiss, one more touch, perhaps a glide of a hand—

Eleine froze before his tent, the tan hide a whisper away from her fingertips. Perhaps she should turn back. 

She felt the ghost of his breath against her face as he lowered himself before her face, lips coming to encompass her own. 

“Cullen?” she called, allowing him a few moments before she stepped inside. 

“Ah.” Amber eyes flitted up to her, a golden head rising from amongst papers and books. “Inquisitor.” 

Eleine cocked her hip and crossed her arms. “A desk, Commander? You had them bring you a desk?” 

Said desk was hardly the sturdy (she knew well just how sturdy) mahogany masterpiece from his office at Skyhold, with its chipped legs and squeaking bolts. And yet he had had it commissioned. Cullen rubbed the back of his head. “Ah— yes. I, well… I have other duties that must be completed, work I’ve left unfinished, and—”

Eleine shook her head, a warm laugh slipping between her lips before she managed to catch it. “I expect you will be resting at an appropriate time, Cullen.” 

He looked down at the mounds of parchment and back to her face. “Inquisitor.”

“I.” She stepped toward him, the tent flap fully closing behind her, insulating them from most of the outside noise. “Expect.” She stepped up to his desk, planting her hands on free space, before leaning down close to his face. “You will be resting at an appropriate time tonight,” she breathed on his lips, “ _Commander_.” She heard more than saw him swallow. And she knew this time that the tremor through him was not fear. She wavered in her place before him, fighting her thrashing blood and stirring core. 

Their noses touched, and they pressed together, foreheads dragging over one another. They shared their breath, and her hand was clutching his mantle before she had time to reel it back in. She pulled back, just for a moment, to see his face, to see the want in his eyes. 

The candlelight warmed the edges of his face, making his amber eyes glow a deep honey. Their corners, so often pinched, were relaxed into those lovely laugh lines of his. 

His mouth was settled into a smile of wonder. 

“You are more than I deserve,” he breathed, and Eleine felt her heart drop to the floor. Air was snatched from her lungs as he brought his larger hand to cover hers, the roughness of his glove on her bare, soft skin, sending shivers down her spine. 

“Nonsense,” she whispered, “utter nonsense.” 

His hand moved from hers to her wrist, pulling her closer to him. She stretched out over his desk, having to rest her knee on its chipped surface to reach. He knocked his nose against hers again, closing his eyes with a content sigh. She watched him breathe her in, throat tight. “Eleine,” he mumbled, and her heart began to pound. “Eleine,” he said again, with that damn voice and that damn tone and she—

“Eleine.”

He groaned as she dragged her nails across his stubbled cheek, catching his chin between the tips of her fingers to yank his face up, up. Her lips seized his, and the room scorched with her fire. Heat seared through her veins as she pushed closer to him, closer, closer – not enough. She was trapped by the books and papers and inks between them. But he was sweet beneath her tongue, so sweet and spiced and tender. She let go of his face, dragging her nails down his chest to the first buckle of his mantle, tugging it loose. His chest heaved, his hand spasming on her wrist.

Fingers slipping underneath his undershirt, Eleine scraped a nail over his collar bone, moaning as she pulled a growl from his throat, feeling it vibrate in her mouth. She pressed her fingers down on the warmth of his bare skin, giving a little noise of discontent that she could not reach more of him. She wanted to taste him, needed to taste him. 

But Cullen’s hand let go of her wrist to capture the back of her head, keeping her mouth on his. She could feel it tremble, and Maker, she was shaking with him. She pulled away a fraction, to place heated kisses on his face, that strong nose, the heavy brows, the stubble-roughened cheeks. She nipped at his chin and jaw, and he moaned, leaning back in his chair. His hand seared down from her neck to her shoulder, grazing down her front. 

His large hand dragged over her left breast, gloved fingernails scraping over her nipple. 

Eleine jerked, biting down on his bottom lip, and Cullen’s hand shot down, clenching around her hip and yanking her towards him. Glass smashed on the rug, papers fluttering around them as the books thumped to the ground. She drew away from the kiss for a moment, crawling across the table, knocking more ink to the ground, papers and feathers swirling in the air. 

Cullen lifted her waist up, and she let him pull her to him, settling into his lap, straddling him. The chair caged her legs, keeping her tight against him. Cullen’s hands spasmed on her hips and she grabbed his front, yanking him into another kiss. Her core throbbed, so close to his, so close. Kiss by kiss she sunk closer, and then his hands were on her ass. He squeezed, and she threw her head back. With a jerk she planted herself on top of his cock, and ground her pussy against his straining erection. He jolted beneath her, and in between their breaths, out came another prayer. “Eleine.”

He pulsed with every swirl of her hips, and their breath grew more jagged. There was not enough friction, not enough pleasure. Harder, harder, faster. And then Cullen thrust upwards, and her mouth broke from his in a keen. His hands were clamped around on her waist, and they yanked her down now, into every one of his thrusts. 

There were too many clothes and not enough skin. 

Eleine’s fingers fumbled with his mantle and armour, throwing the metal across the room with a clang they barely heard. Then there was nothing but a cotton shirt and his skin, speckled with pearled scars and warmth, so much warmth. Eleine clung onto the back of his neck with one hand, the other sliding down his front to find his cock. 

“Ah,” Cullen moaned, head falling back as her tongue traced the carving of his peck. Eleine sucked, and popped the button of his trousers. “Eleine.” One more. _Ping_ , it landed on the floor. She had torn it off. Then through the placket of his trousers, mouth around his nipple bitting. 

He was trembling, shaking, in her arms. 

Beneath the lip of his underwear, to where it was warm, so warm and slick. Finally, finally, her fingers gripped the wrap of flesh around steel, and Cullen buried his head in her shoulder. “Maker— Maker, Eleine!” Maker, indeed. He filled her hand, and she should have known from the feel of him against her pussy, but skin on skin his size was something else. 

She pressed open mouthed kisses to his cheek, as her fingers fiddled with him, thumb rubbing the underside, and forefinger kneading the slippery tip. Then she began to roll her wrist, and squeeze. Cullen spasmed, hands holding onto her waist for dear life. He jerked into her hand, hips thrusting upwards, and Eleine bit her lip, moan of approval slipping past. 

“Yes, Cullen,” she encouraged, “yes, yes, love.” 

He was throbbing and twitching in her fingers, intelligible words rushing out his mouth. His face pushed further into the crook of her neck, and she keened as his teeth sunk around her sensitive skin. Her pants chafed over her pussy with every pound over his cock, and she was losing her sense as Cullen began lapping at the bite on her neck. 

He pulsed in her hand, and his body shook in her arms. A beat, then—

“ _Eleine_.” 

She held him through the last jerk, and warmth shot into her hand, slipping between her fingers, sticky and soft. He was a weight against her chest, clinging to her through the last of it. She was mumbling words in his ear she didn’t even know. Snatches of “love,” and his name kissed her ears. Eleine kissed his temple as he caught his breath, feeling spent and bubbly. She pulled her hand from his pants, making sure nothing dripped or touched him, before winding her arms around his neck, holding him against her fully as he rested. He shifted, coiling his larger arms around her waist. Together they trembled, chests bumping in their serrated breaths. Resting her head on his shoulder, Eleine looked at her hand, slick with his cum, and her head swirled in the air around them. He’d been at her mercy. Her heart beat, hard and heavy. 

He had trusted her. She blinked past the wetness in her eyes that smudged her view. 

He trusted her. 

Cared for her. 

He was hers. 

She settled against him, closing her eyes, breathing him in. She rubbed her fingers together, savouring the feeling of the evidence. She would not forget, not so long as she breathed and burned. 

“Eleine,” was mumbled onto her chest. 

“Hmm?” She crawled a little closer to him, feeling a tad dwarfed by his chest and shoulders. 

“I—” he stumbled, “Maker’s breath.” 

And she laughed. True, ringing, from her belly to her heart, Eleine laughed. Drawing back, she cupped his face with her clean hand, to look at his face. The smile warming her cheeks only grew at the sight of his rosy cheeks and tired eyes. She brushed a thumb beneath his eye. “Rest, love.” 

“Eleine.” He rested his cheek against her hand, eyes closing. “Thank you.” 

She chuckled. “Speaking of.” She held her hand up to him, and he cracked an eye open. His mouth opened, cheeks deepening in their red. “Have anything for this, Cullen?” 

“I— Maker’s breath, yes.” As he unlocked his arms from around her, to lean over and rummage through the wreckage of his table contents, she considered her fingers. Her eyes flicked back to him, and she wavered, fighting the temptation to suck it off. But he was tired, and she had no intention of exciting him again for her own purposes. So she sat still and waited, till he popped back up again with a handkerchief. She reached over to grab it from him, but he pulled it away, and took her hand with very red ears. 

She bit down on her lip to stop laughing as he cleaned her up, bumbling and stuttering, saying things so muddled she didn’t think even he knew what was being said. 

Leaning over their hands, she kissed his jaw, his cheek, his nose, then his eye. Finishing on his forehead, she looked back down at him, to find him smiling, amber eyes light and happy. There was a word pressing against her lips, and emotion in her throat, that she didn’t know. What could she say to tell him her gratitude for this moment? Her happiness, the spike of fear, the warmth in her belly? Her hope, her contentment. 

He knocked his forehead against hers, and she smiled. “I’ll have someone bring in a bedroll for you. You need to rest, Cullen.” 

He nodded, hand stroking her cheek. They warmed beneath his touch. 

With creaking and stiff movements, Eleine pulled away, unhooking her limbs from around him, and standing. Her hand would still need some water and a good scrub, but she was presentable enough to return to the fray. 

She leaned down, snatching one last kiss from him. “Goodnight, love.” 

His own goodnight followed her out the tent, and she tucked it up into her heart.  
She swayed through the camp, fetching her robe and pouches, limbs and body stiff, head feeling as though it were swimming in the air. It wasn’t until she had sent someone to fetch him a bed, and was hidden away into the woods nearby a crag, that she realised it hadn’t been _her_ who had been touched. Yet she was trembling with the after shakes of an orgasm, wet and exhausted. 

Eleine took a deep, steadying breath, and moved in her position so her vials stopped crunching against the stone. There was a snap behind her, and warning shot through her. 

Too late, too late. 

She jerked back, weak limbs stumbling over rocks, hands grasping for a staff not there. There was a smudge of black across her vision, a stench of wine. 

Then pain. 

Wet and sticky, something curled around her shoulder blade, dribbling down her spine. Her voice snagged in her throat, then tore from her mouth in a warbling shriek. 

Her whole body was alight in agony. Through the black of her vision and the noise in her head, she felt tendons in her shoulder snap, whipping against the inside of her skin. Deep, the dagger dug. Deep, till it had no blade left, and she felt the crossguard lay against her skin. 

She jerked forward, stumbling in blind panic, and slammed into the jagged stone. Her vial pouch crunched, and the crags and ashen rock melting from her eyes in a vapour of purple.

She stood beneath a canopy of sun tinged leaves. The harsh gasps of a person dying echoed in her ears. Taunts, words foul and wretched falling from long destroyed lips. 

_‘Foul little Elfy.’_

Eleine fell to her knees.

_A gilded sword slashed through Adahlen’s middle, ripping him in half_.

She screamed. 

The tether of her control stretched and tore. Deep, hungry her fire clawed, swelling in her stomach – and exploding. Out, out, out. 

Reaching, ravaging.

To burn until there was nothing left to burn.


	27. You Are Good, Vhenan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait! Love you all <3 Hope you enjoy xx

Adahlen did not even look at Samael, as the blade rose and fell. He never looked away from Eleine, never let his eyes stray from her face. She could see that same evenness in his eyes he always had. It was as though he was telling her about another flower, imparting his knowledge, comforting her, pretending as though he did not see her tears. As the gilded sword tore through his flesh and bone and ligaments and tendons and organs—

He reached toward Eleine with his eyes. 

She could not even hear her own scream. Her voice wasn’t loud enough to reach him, to do anything, to even exist. Nothing about her was enough. Not before, and not now. She had never been enough. 

Samael danced around his body, hopping from foot to foot, singing. 

She could never protect herself from her mother’s slaps. Could not protect herself from her father’s taunts and disgust. From Samael’s violence, his insanity. His cruelty. 

Eleine crawled towards Adahlen, fingertips reaching the quickening ocean of blood. A heady, mephitic smell stuffed down her nose and throat. She gagged. 

Two blue eyes stared into her own, misting as a mouth opened and closed, letting out silent exhalations of pain. 

She had never protected herself. Had she tried? Now he was dying, her forest, her dear friend. Had she tried to save him? How could she, when her arms were so small, her grasping fingers so weak?

Fingers ripped through her hair, fisting against her skull. She was wrenched away, and as hairs were torn from their roots, she felt her belly tear and scream. 

Eleine tilted her head up, knowing already the sight that was there. How many times had she seen this? The spectre of this moment dogged her wherever she went, however old she grew. 

Samael licked his lips, smearing splatters of blood across their sheeny surface. 

“Dance with me, little bitch.”

Then Eleine looked down, as she had all those years ago, at the sword. He had not bothered to wipe it before sheathing it. Down, Adahlen’s blood ran. Caught on the edge, it welled, before flooding down in little rivers. Wine rain down a glass window. 

No matter how many she killed, how many she asserted her power over, still the hopelessness, the vulnerability, she had felt in this moment, haunted her. Had she ever stopped being this child? Had she ever grown? 

Samael rattled her small body. “I said—"

That rage she had felt crushed had her child’s heart. Like a mouth snapping open, the tear in her belly split. The fade pressed in, shapeless faces, all so hungry. Their eyes turned upon the moment, giving, and in turn taking something from her. She looked back at them, she demanded they come in. 

And for the first time in her life, at the age of eight, Eleine burned. 

_‘I believe you’ve been a killer for much longer than any of us suspected.’_

Leliana had said that to her. 

Yes. 

Yes. 

Eleine burned, burned till there was almost nothing of Samael left. She had listened to his screams, let the fire retreat into her for moments at a time, so that he would burn for longer. Killing him was not enough. It had never been enough. 

Still, she was afraid. 

Though she had awakened her magic, her fire, her strength – Eleine was still weak. 

Always, always so weak. How long could she massacre her enemies for, until she lost another darling? 

Would she lose Cullen? To her father, to Corypheus?

Again, she watched the moment where the sword raised and fell. Over and over, the moment taunted her. No matter how many others she killed, she could never destroy Samael in time. The blood was on her now. But never hers. Always theirs. Her precious darlings. Poor, innocent darlings. 

Then Adahlen’s head moved. He was slashed, on the grass, dying. But he turned to face her and his mouth opened, and she was ready, ready for the words of hate she had always known she deserved to hear—

“It was not your fault, Ma’ lath.” 

From somewhere far off she heard her cry of agony. Serrated and raw, it cut through a sudden wind. 

Her world dissolved in a whirlwind of emerald leaves. A shimmer of purple went flashing by, then there was nothing but her and the forest, cast into night. But it was different. The air had no taste, the grass no scent. The world was still – there was no wind in the leaves, nor a rustle in the brush. The colours were saturated, almost luminescent, stabbing into her eyes. Eddies of jade and violet swam through the trees, swirling around the ground at her feet. Sometimes they danced upward, chasing an invisible path. Other times they tapered out, wisping off into the darkness. 

She turned in circles, taking in the glow of the moon, the quiet. 

“I have missed you, El.” 

A shard burrowed into her chest. Eleine turned one last time, and found eyes softer than the sky, two blue gems of kindness and joy. Air wrenched out of her lungs, out of her throat, leaving her empty. 

Beside a twisted bole, half obscured by verdures of royal purple, stood a Dalish elf. 

A nightmare, she thought at first. An apparition of her worst fears. A terror demon, wriggling its way into her broken mind.

Yet out the words came, from her own throat, feeling foreign from so many years of avoiding them. “Ma’ adahl’en.” With them she felt the forest pulse, and Adahlen smiled. 

She was on the ground, clutching at the earth as though she were falling. Eleine wailed. Inhuman, tormented. Down her arms, her fingernails scraped. 

And then he was there, hands so soft, holding her face, gripping her, pulling her back to him. 

“El,” those lips called, “El.” And she was holding him, pulling him to her, wrapping herself around his ethereal frame. Her fingers dragged up, slow, aching, to run along the curve of his ears.

Up, up, they swept. 

They spoke words, incoherent, to each other. Streams of elvhen sped from those lips, bounding around the forest, and though she knew very little of the language, she felt she understood their meaning perfectly. Her head felt thick, full and stuffed. 

She did not know how many minutes, or hours, passed as they stayed there, intertwined. Somehow she knew in this place there was no time. She knew, she truly did, what this was. 

She pressed her head against his shoulder, and tried to breathe in his scent. 

Nothing. 

She squeezed her fingers around his back, hunting for warmth. 

Nothing. 

She sobbed. 

She knew what this was… how dangerous this was. Yet. _Yet_ —

She placed kisses all over his face, up those ears and across those wonderful cheek bones. Regal and without heat and _not real_. She felt the wetness of tears on his face, and worked to wipe it away with her lips. To take away the pain and give instead love. He joined in soon, and she shook with the feeling of those lips on her skin. 

Her mind screamed them to be a phantom, but her heart beat in pain. She could not let him go. She had to, had to cast this spirit aside. Run back to the world she belonged…

Finally, they slumped against the strength of one another, and the grounded aurora lights slunk their way around them. 

He cradled her head under his neck and crooned and her hands clutched at his back, tired but unrelenting. 

There were things she wanted to say, but could not. 

_I watched you die_ , her heart screamed. _It was my fault. I killed you._

But she could not say it. 

“I lost you,” she quaked. “He took you from me—“ her voice cracked. “Lost you forever.”

“Amahn,” he whispered, “Ma’ lath.” She cried into his chest. “Here,” he continued, “here, my love.”

“Ma’ adahl’en,” she returned, “You did not survive. Ma dinem.”

“Yes,” he murmured, “but you survived. I can feel you strength.”

“Ir abelas,” she sobbed. But he hushed her. The noise swung through the trees, like wind in the leaves. 

“No,” he sighed. “You have nothing to be sorry for. We were children, and both foolish enough to tempt Fate and be stung by her.”

“My forest.” Her throat ached. “I missed you, my forest.” 

“And you, my love. I think of you always.” 

She pulled back to look at him, taking in his changed features properly. He was as she remembered, all gentle lines and blue eyes. But his cheeks were less chubby, hollowed in age and experience. His nose sat at the same line as it had then, slightly crooked to the left from when he fell from that large oak. She took in his bare skin, the ivory glow and sheen. He looked to be her own age. Yet… there was an agelessness to him, here. 

She clutched Adahlen’s arms, and pulled them up. They swayed against each other, Adahlen about a head shorter than her. He traced the lines of her face with a finger. 

“You must go soon, Ma’ lath.” She shook her head but he pressed on. “It is not safe here, others are coming.” His delicate fingers weaved through her hair, the touch no more than a whisper of air. “You burn so bright, they cannot help but seek you.” 

Eleine sunk against him, limbs so heavy, so weak. She had no time, no more time. She had to, had to say the words that clawed at her heart. 

“I’ve done things, Adahlen,” she croaked, fear a physical thing in her stomach. She looked down at him, ready for truths to spill from her lips, for him to turn against her, to hate what she had become. 

But he shook his head. “No, Ma ‘lath. No. Not one word.”

Eleine’s heart shuddered, and she searched his face, gleaming alongside the moon. He was pearly, and the tips of his ears had begun to grow transparent. 

“I know the good in you.” His hand cupped her cheek, pulling her face to his. The touch was light, a ghosting breath against her skin. But his eyes, so close to her own, had a strength that kept her rooted. “I know you are good. Despite what you may have done, despite what you think of yourself, I know you have a goodness inside you like no one else.”

Eleine sobbed. “You do not understand.” 

“How many would stand where you do now,” he continued, voice unforgiving and hard, “and not abuse that power you hold? You could send hundreds to their deaths, insist on all the riches in the world. You could sit and do nothing.” She was shaking her head but he clasped it still. “You face death every day. You face hordes of demons. Your own ghosts and pains. And you push past them all, and not for yourself.”

She raised hands to try and shake his shoulders but her fingers fell straight through. “Adahlen?”

“Listen to me, Ma ‘lath. Listen. One more lesson. I have only ever spoken truth to you, and I speak with it now.” He pressed his forehead against hers, but the pressure was a brush of a feather. 

“Adahlen, you’re—"

“You do everything you do, Eleine, everything you have ever done, for others. Whatever terrible deeds you have committed, I know you did for someone else’s’ sake.” 

She collapsed against him, arms arcing wide to trap all of him to her chest. But he was gone. 

“You are good, vhenan. You are good.”

“No— Ma’ adahl’en!” 

“Amahn. I am always here. I never left you.”

“Stay, _please._ ”

“Always.” 

“Inquisitor.” 

Eleine turned, the world shimmering, concaving. Solas stood watching, fur coat hulking around his shoulders. She could not look away from those grey, feral eyes. The forest rose up beside them, and came crashing down upon their heads. 

“I am always here, El.”

She was wrenched from pressing colour, to blackness, to a world of flame. 

“ _Eleine!_ ” Who was that that called to her with such desperation? What was that, that howled around her? Eleine blinked, but her mind skittered, latching onto one thing then the next in broken succession. Heat pulled the moisture from her lips, and she wet them with an arid tongue. Fire. She was in a pulsing whirlpool of fire. 

Her fire. She smiled. Then it crashed from her lips. She was sick, to delight in such destruction. For there was nothing but plumes of ash, tainting the air in between the coursing blaze. There was no glittering snow. She looked up. No sky. Where had the stars gone? 

“Inquisitor.” 

Whose voice was that, calling to her over the scream of the flames? 

“You must quell your magic, I cannot keep it from the encampment for much longer. Soon Cassandra will have to—” 

Cassandra? She tasted bile on her tongue, but could not understand why she hated the thought of whatever this Cassandra would need to do. 

“You are back with us now. We are not your enemies. Quell your fire.” 

She was thinking of grey eyes. She pressed a blistered palm to her forehead. Why did it ache so much?

Then it came to her, like a whisper in her ear. Why should she not just burn? 

Eleine laid down upon the ash. It would be better to burn, to burn it all. The fire pressed in. The ache would stop, the—

_‘I can feel your strength.’_

She jerked, stomach flying up into her ribs. Her blood sizzled, and the voices were calling. So many. How many? Why? Why did she care? 

_‘You have nothing to be sorry for.’_

She could not lie down. Eleine creaked back up again, and reached out a finger. The tip of her glove singed off in the flames. It was circling her, dancing around her frame, coming close, but always retreating before consumption. She was in a tomb of flames. 

_‘You are good, vhenan.’_

Something slammed into her core. A pressing hand, squishing her down, trying to silence her, to snuff her out, to _take it away from her_ — 

So weak. The fire writhed, rising up, up. She would bring it crashing down upon the hand. They would feel what it is to be trodden on. 

“Enough, Seeker, you have made her angry—”

“She must be stopped—”

“Eleine!”

There was that voice once more. It hurt, scraping down her heart. There was such pain in the tone, such fear. 

“Listen to me, Inquisitor. The attack is over. It is over. You are safe now. Quell your flames.” 

Eleine did not care that _she_ was safe. Because Adahlen wasn’t—

Her mind keeled, spinning, spinning. The world was a swimming mass. Adahlen. The mist, the attack, the fade. It mushed through her damaged brain like a swinging hammer. 

She followed that voice, the coaxing tone, through the noise and mess in her mind. She was on her feet, trusting nothing but her ears to lead her through the fire. 

“Inquisitor.” She stumbled over the jagged ground, head swishing around her shoulders. It felt as though blood was rushing up and down from her toes to her scalp. The fire parted around her, still a blaze, but no longer hungry. The reds gave way to orange, then finally, as she crunched over the bones of her attacker, yellow. 

Soon, as she came to stand before her unaware companions, there was nothing but black. An obsidian swathed world… how much she loved the sight of it. The tides of ash never came within range of her nose, no matter how much she moved through it. How odd. She toyed with a few thicker specks, her tattered glove revealing sparks of green. How many individuals had she seen choke with the ash from her fire? And yet not once, not even that time— that time with Samael and Adahlen and… Eleine rapped her head with her knuckles, banging out the sight of the clearing. 

“Inquisi—”

“I’m here, Solas. Do not stop talking, I cannot see,” Eleine said, stumbling forward a few more steps. If he stopped talking, her mind might fracture completely. 

“Eleine.” It was Cullen, the voice that had kept calling to her. And now there was a rushing in the air, as a great hulking frame came barrelling through the ash towards her. 

“I’m here,” she called back, her thick feet tripping over Maker knew what. Then she stopped. She had walked backwards, away from his form, not toward. 

“Eleine, where—” She could see the air shifting around him as he turned in circles, arms no doubt outstretched. 

Eleine retreated further into the ash, heart a thudding mess. Animalistic fear surged through her, spiking in her blood and chest. Age old instincts that had preserved her through her wretched life, that she had not even known she had lost, were back. 

She trusted Cullen. _‘Safe and solid. Protecting and proud. He feels like quiet, stronger when you hold him.’_

So why, no matter how her heart strained toward him, were her feet mired in the ground? He was calling to her, but something in her skittered, it told her she was not safe, he would hurt her, find her, damage her. 

It told her she was at war, that she had never stopped being at war, that she was never safe. 

“Commander, you need to wait. Something is wrong.” The air settled at Solas’ words, an unnatural stillness coming to the ash cloud. “Inquisitor, can you hear me?”

She fought the hand around her throat, clamped around her tongue. “Yes,” she forced out. 

“Can you tell me what has happened? Why were you in the fade?” Solas’ voice seemed to be a part of the air, disembodied, settling over her shaking body. 

Eleine lowered herself to the ground, so that any movement toward them or otherwise would be somewhat contained. “I was attacked.” She moved her dry tongue around her mouth. 

“Yes,” Solas answered, “we found several of the sentries dead. But there is something else. Why were you in the fade?” 

“She was what?” A biting voice, lilting with an Orlesian accent, cut through the air. Eleine cocked her head, images swarming in her mind of arms folded behind a back, and nasty grey eyes sharpened in suspicion. Leliana. 

“You were there,” Eleine said, “you are _always_ there.”

“Your magic is flaring and disrupted. Was the attacker a mage? Did they cast your mind into the fade?” Eleine laid down, pressing her face into the crusted ground. 

She came up for air. “It was the mist— Adan’ s Delirium Mist.” She laid back down again. 

There was a stretch of silence. “I am not familiar with that, Inquisitor.” 

Eleine knocked her head into the ground and pulled herself up. “Delirium. Delirium Mist.” 

Again, there was quiet. Then his voice came again, and with a power like Adahlen’s in the fade, it bounded through the air. “You are safe, Inquisitor. We are not your enemies.” 

Eleine gathered her legs to her chest, and tucked her head against her knees. The darkness crept in. “The mist attacks the mind. It—” Eleine shuddered. “It has done something to me.” 

“If the creator of that mist is Adan, then it was merely a terror potion. The effects of such things are not permanent, Inquisitor.”

Her dark laugh echoed through the settling ash cloud. Loud and harsh it tore at her throat. She threw her head back with the hilarity of it, voice growing in volume with each disjointed peal of laughter. She laughed and laughed, till all the ash had landed, and the small gathering of her advisors, Solas and Cassandra could see her. She laughed while they crept towards her, slow, Cullen behind them all, footsteps heavy with hesitation and fear. When Solas reached her first, pale hand extended to brush fingertips across her brow, she snickered to herself. 

The others trailed behind him, keeping a distance at the wave of his hand. Leliana prowled off somewhere, leaving Cassandra and Cullen talking in low tones, and Josephine looking drawn.

“Inquisitor?” Solas murmured, crouching before her, staff in hand. 

Eleine quietened, watching him with blurry eyes beneath loose bangs. “You saw?” 

Solas paused, laying his staff down, and turning to consider her with those dark eyes of his. She could not read the smooth expression on his face. “Yes,” he replied, voice quiet. 

Eleine cocked her head at him, warning tightening her face. “It wasn’t your first time seeing it.”

“No,” was his hushed agreement, “but this time was… different.” He inched his hands towards her face, slow, giving her enough time to push them away. She let him clasp her face, tilting her head left and right. 

Eleine felt her lips slash into a grin. “It was an exact replica. Not just a dream.” Leliana returned to the group, face possessing a blankness that made Eleine’s teeth clack together in aggression. 

Solas studied her expression for a few moments, before examining the rest of her. “The fade often mirrors events with accuracy, however some images and experiences become… distorted.” 

Eleine pointed to her injured shoulder, fire growing antsy with his wandering hands. “This was induced. The mist… it wrenched the memory out.”

Solas frowned as he examined her shoulder. “Yes.”

“It hurt.” Her voice quaked. _Two blue eyes stared into her own, misting as a mouth opened and closed, letting out silent exhalations of pain._ “It hurt so bad.” 

Warmth dripped down her shoulder as Solas began to heal the wound. “I cannot fully heal this without cleaning it, Inquisitor. We will have to do this elsewhere—”

“Later, Solas,” Leliana cut in, and Eleine’s eyes sharpened on the widened stance, the clasped hands behind Leliana’s back. “We must speak with her.” 

Solas surveyed the woman with an expression Eleine felt she too possessed. “The Inquisitor is not fit for more than rest. She is not yet stable.” His staff’s crystal glinted in the corner of her eye, and Eleine looked down at it. There, she saw herself, distorted by the obsidian. Madness skittered across the lines of her face. Eleine grinned at herself, but her heart was quiet. An emptiness settled over her chest. 

“It is important, Solas.” Leliana began coming towards them, and Eleine felt her fire spark in her core. “Thank you for your help in subduing her.” 

Solas shifted, placing himself between them. “She is not—”

Eleine found her hand wrapped around his arm. “It is fine, Solas.” 

He turned to look at her with incredulity. “You must not go with them, Inquisitor.” 

But she was no longer looking at him. Her eyes were on Leliana. _Subduing her_. Eleine licked her lips, and stood on heavy legs. Violence pumped through her limbs as she stalked towards the Spymaster, and followed her through the field of destruction to an abandoned sentries tent. Cullen and Josephine slipped in after them, Cassandra, it seemed, deciding to remain behind with Solas. 

Eleine strained her eyes onto the off-yellow canvas of the tent, fighting the swell of green and the stench of death. 

“Eleine.” Maker, she could not hear that voice right now. Not so sweet, so gentle. 

“Perhaps it was the Larryals,” Josephine worried, “ever since… they have been very vocal in their distaste for the Inquisition.” 

“It was not the Larryals,” Leliana said, “was it, Inquisitor?” 

_‘No,’ she begged, ‘no, please, Samael. No!’_ Too soon, too soon. 

“If there has been threats on her life and you did not inform me—” Cullen began. 

“No, Commander, not in the way you are thinking,” Leliana soothed, the Orlesian lilt plucking at Eleine’s nerves.

_Adahlen did not even look at Samael, as the blade rose and fell. He never looked away from Eleine, never let his eyes stray from her face. The gilded sword tore through his flesh and bone and ligaments and tendons and organs—_

“What is the significance of the hand, Inquisitor?” 

Was that her breathing? Eleine clapped a hand over her mouth. Flushing with heat, heart heaving, she shook. 

“What hand?” Cullen snapped, “what is going on?” 

“I searched the body, however charred he was,” Leliana replied, tone steady and light, “and found the skeleton of a third hand.” 

“A hand?” Josephine exclaimed, then gave a weak sort of gasp that grated down Eleine’s patience. “Oh.” 

_Eleine crawled towards him, fingertips reaching the quickening pool of blood._

_Two eyes of blue stared into her own, misting as a mouth opened and closed, letting out silent exhalations of pain._

The world of white canvas spun as she turned, and she faced instead the candle tortured faces of her advisors. Cullen’s eyes burned with that dark breed of hate, of fear, he wore when a blood mage was mentioned. 

“Do you know, Eleine?” Cullen demanded, failing, it seemed, to maintain the gentleness of his voice. “Who sent this assassin?”

“He was no assassin,” Leliana and Eleine answered at the same time. Cullen closed his mouth, hand trembling with the force of its grip around the hilt of his sword. 

“That was not an attempt on my life,” Eleine breathed, “it was a taunt.” 

“What is it he wants from you?” Leliana probed, hands clasping behind her back, eyes glittering. Eleine licked her lips again. 

“Who?” Cullen spat. 

Eleine’s face broke into one of those grins. “My father, Cullen.” He froze, eyes growing wide in horror. “Lord Hagan Trevelyan.” His mouth opened again, a touch, and she tried to focus on the scar there, rather than the sickness in her stomach and the skittering of her mind. She turned to Leliana. “And I doubt he wants anything from me. It seems to me as though he’s bored.” She was all Eleine saw. How she hated that woman. 

“Bored,” Cullen echoed, and his face twisted. Eleine could not look at the pain on his face – pain for her. Josephine put down her clipboard, leaning on the table, body trembling. 

“There is no chance it was revenge? Can we expect worse attempts?” Leliana dug, beginning to pace. 

Eleine’s teeth clacked together again. “Revenge, Leliana? What is there for him to avenge?” Heat began to bubble in her veins, and the desire that lead her to the tent quickened through her veins. 

Cullen had drawn a little closer to her, and she stepped back. The tent brushed against her back, and she flinched as it touched her shoulder. She clenched her fingers around her arms, ignoring the pulsing pain it caused, and raised her chin. 

Leliana stopped moving, and tilted her head to the side, eyes roving up and down Eleine’s body. “What is the significance of the hand, Inquisitor?” 

Eleine bared her teeth at the woman. Heat flushed in her cheeks. _Fingers ripped through her hair, fisting against her skull._ “It was all that was left of my brother—” 

“Brother?” Cullen breathed, and Eleine refused to see the expression that matched the tone. 

“After I burned him to death,” Eleine finished, taking a step across the dirt toward Leliana. Her head swam, Adahlen’s head moved to her, mouth opening, opening. 

The words had fallen upon her companions like heavy stones in a river. She felt the truth she had never spoken, not once in her life, leave the cage of her lips and spill out to taint the world. Her companions horrified eyes were strikes against her skin, excepting Leliana’s, who’s cold grey orbs remained as unaffected as they always were. Josephine gave a jerk back in shock, pretty tanned face growing white. Eleine did not look at Cullen. 

“And you are sure he will not seek—"

“Does my father seem to be the sort of man that cares whether his children live or die?” Eleine spat, arm whipping out, finding Leliana close enough to seize. Yes. Finally, finally. She latched onto the woman, yanking her to Eleine’s front, letting out a yowl as the wound on her shoulder split open. 

_Samael danced around his body, hopping from foot to foot, singing._

“Eleine—" Cullen cried. 

“Does he seem to be the sort of man that would waste his time avenging failed spawn?” Eleine forced out, spitting on the woman’s stunned face. “A tool—” Eleine shook Leliana, “rendered useless by his madness? Do you truly think he cared, when they hauled me before him, blackened with ash, with Samael’s fucking hand still in my hair?” 

_‘You are good, vhenan.’_

She heaved the woman away from her, slapping a hand over the agony in her shoulder. She regarded them all beneath the hairs wrenched loose from her braids. Leliana stumbled before righting herself, eyes wide on Eleine. “You stupid bitch,” Eleine spat, “what do you know of my father? What he is capable of?” Her fire pulsed, rising higher and higher in her core. _If nothing else, Eleine, you always were an object of amusement._ “He needs no other motive than entertainment to hurt me.” 

She clasped the edge of the table, moving to toss it across the space. But it lit, raging with flame hot enough to sear her face. Yes. Yes. She continued screaming over their yells of surprise. “He came to me, plucked the hand out of my hair, and said _do it again._ ” 

“Eleine,” Cullen shouted. Through the fire she saw him yank Josephine out of the way of the heat. 

“You know absolutely _nothing_ of my family, Leliana. And nothing of me!” 

She would burn that woman now too. Always a pest. Always lurking behind her. How nice it would be, to bring that foul shadow master to the light of her fire. Would she squirm? 

“Eleine.” There were hands on her arms, a face before hers. And the stench of burning hair in her nose. Something black on his face. And red and raw and— 

Light was snuffed out, as though a great hand had slapped down upon their tent. There was an aching silence, a hollowness in the tent. 

“Cullen,” she broke, hand trembling blind to his cheek. “Cullen—” 

“Shh, shh,” he soothed, arms curving around her, bringing her to his front. “Eleine, it’s okay, it’s okay.” 

Smoke and spice warred in her nose as her face was pressed against his chest. “Cullen.” 

“Enough.” Light came flickering back, and she flinched at the intruders tone. 

“Solas,” Josephine gasped. 

“The Inquisitor has been subjected to intrusive mental and emotional torture. I warned you she was not yet stable. If you had burned, if she had not been in quite so extreme control of herself, you would have all brought it upon yourselves. You have since learned your lesson. She must come with me.” 

Cullen did not let her go. 

“Let her go, Commander. There is nothing you can do for her but let her heal.” 

There was a hand on her elbow, and she recognised the touch of those long fingers. Regal and pointed, with a hidden strength. She let them pull her from Cullen. She was there, but not really. There was a swimming image of Cullen’s stricken face, but somehow he sprouted swords from his eyes. As she stumbled along beside Solas, who led her through the trees, out of sight, to his tent, she fought off that which wasn’t real, pushing itself into her world. 

Sometimes she could hear the words he was speaking to her, as he laid her down on his bedroll, turning her over to clean and heal her injury. Other times she was lost in a sea of blood and green. Then, what seemed to be much time later, as Solas was tucking her in, she heard him whisper. 

“I… must apologise, Inquisitor. There were occasions where I have perhaps spoken too harshly to you. I have come to know that much of what you are, is what you were made. You do not necessarily choose to be this way.” 

Eleine felt him catch her tear with his finger. “How long can I use what happened as an excuse for what I am?” 

There was quiet, and her mind slipped towards the waves of the fade. “Until the point you have grown to know better,” Solas called to her from somewhere. 

“And?” she murmured back. 

“I think you are past that point, Inquisitor.”


	28. Amber And Smoke

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am back! Super sorry for such a long wait - again! Uni is thankfully over for a few months, so I'll be able to pump out more regular chapters. Thank you, thank you, for the continued support. Everyone who leaves comments and subscribes and gives kudos and bookmarks are such sweet individuals. 
> 
> I really hope you enjoy the chapter, and that you are all doing well xx 
> 
> Lots of love, as always <3

The rosy interior of the tent hazed into vision. Eleine blinked, remained still for a few moments, breathing and listening. Something to her right was clinking, scraping, feet moving over dirt. 

Eleine tilted her head to look around. Beside the tent entrance which glimmered with blue light, stood Solas.

“Is the barrier to keep others out, or to keep me in?” Eleine rasped, voice pitched in amusement.

Solas looked over his shoulder at her from a work table, mouth giving a slight quirk upwards. “Your Spymaster would have it the latter.” Despite the inching smile, there was something dangerous in his voice, a note of distaste.

Eleine sighed, untangling her legs from blankets. “That she would. How long was I asleep?” 

“A few hours, it will soon be morning.” Solas turned back to whatever he was working on, nimble fingers plucking up herbs and scattering others across the wooden bench. A half used candle spluttered amongst vials and tinctures, wax oozing down the sides of its iron holder. 

She watched the flame grow and shrink, matching her breathing with its waves. Being awake brought with it all the memories of the night. Cullen in the seat beneath her, the injury to her shoulder. Eleine wiggled it, finding it the lightest bit tender. The attack, the memory, the confrontation. Her truths. 

Her next breath came out jagged and shaky. “I’m afraid.” 

Solas paused and was still for a few moments. Then he placed a vial back down onto the table, and turned to look at her. His grey eyes, as deep in their many secrets as ever, watched her with an inscrutable expression. “Of what, Inquisitor?”

“So much at once.” Eleine laboured her arms out from beneath covers to massage her temples, fighting for control of the emotions coming to shake her voice. “Am I unstable, Solas?” 

“No more than you were before,” he quipped. “How much of a concern was your sanity before this point?” 

Eleine huffed, a spike of amusement going through her despite the gathering stress in her brow. “I was stable in my own way. Always at risk of tipping one way or another.” She closed her eyes for a moment to contain the acidic look she wanted to send his way. “You know this. Made sure to comment on it several times.” 

Solas’ bare feet popped into her view when she opened her eyes again. Wariness churned in her stomach. She hadn’t heard him move. “I meant only that your moral ambiguity was insufficient for someone in your position. I never intended to infer…” 

Her arms flopped back down onto the covers. “Even if you had, you wouldn’t have been entirely wrong. We’re more at risk, Mages. Cullen—” and at the name, her voice cut off. Eleine pressed her lips together, stomach swelling and churning. 

Solas squatted beside her, as though it were the most casual encounter, as though they were not discussing intimate concerns. “So this is your main concern? What the Commander will think of you now?” 

The tent swam in her eyes. “I was out of control, Solas.” Her voice sounded small even to herself. “Am I truly the same as the mages he hated?” 

Solas leaned back on his hells, and seemed to contemplate it for a few moments. “You do not control your emotions well,” he acquiesced, “nor your violence or actions.” Eleine rolled her eyes, giving a slight huff. “But,” he continued, placing her under stern eyes, “there are very few mages I have met, with the incredible control over their magic, that you have.” 

Eleine kicked the covers in a flare of pain and anger. “How is that true? I could have…” Burned the encampment. Burned Cullen. She had. The blistering on his face. She had hurt him. 

He watched her for a few quiet moments. “As far as I know and have seen, the Commander has very high opinions of you.” His voice was low, deep, soothing like a slow moving river in a shadowed forest. “I understand your concerns, but this incident was no mistake. This was an attack you came through, having killed and harmed no one that you should not have. There was no possibility of your fire reaching the encampment. I believe he knows this. So should you.”

“No possibility.” Eleine sighed rolling onto her side to look at him through squinted eyes. “Are you another spirit? I do not recall you being so kind.” 

A ghost of a smile crossed Solas’ mouth. “You never gave me any reason to be.” 

“One would think basic decency to all was something you had mastered.” 

“One would hope basic decency was something you _possessed._ ” 

Eleine groaned, head feeling milky and stuffed. “Let’s not use words to do with spirits, please.” 

Solas gave a quiet hum, swinging to his feet with grace and returning to his bench. “I would ask you what happened, if you would feel able to answer.” 

Eleine pressed her palms into her eyes, rubbing and rubbing as though it would banish the pain there. “It was not him. Was it?” She knew, she knew, but she needed to hear it. To have the truth come from someone else’s lips. 

“No.” The word fell on her chest like Bull’s hammer. Solas allowed her her privacy, continuing with whatever nonsense he was doing. “It was more likely a spirit, perhaps of compassion, perhaps of love.” 

“How?” she breathed, “and why?” 

“That all depends on how much you are willing to tell me.” 

Eleine struggled with herself for a few moments, before sitting up. She hunched over, letting yanked out strands of her hair fall forward, and swing idly. “I am not entirely sure. I do not believe Adan would be either. Perhaps I passed out part way through the mist’s delusions, or perhaps they bring one’s consciousness close to the fade. Perhaps the spirit pulled me there.” 

Solas gave a low sound of interest. “If the latter, it would have been a spirit that knew either you or the person whose form it took. Perhaps both. How accurate was the place you were in to how you remember?” 

Eleine considered. “The lights and quiet aside, everything.” 

“The space itself may have been occupied by the spirit. If it was a place you frequented, it may have enjoyed watching you. Or felt attached to either one of you.” He began grinding herbs. “If it was a spirit of compassion or love, then it is possible it was drawn to your affection for one another, and was as trapped in the events with your brother as much as you were.” 

The low tones and knowledge continued to fall over her, calming and settling her. When he began to quiet, the talk tapering off, she grew agitated. “Tell me more?” she asked. 

Solas paused, and gave her another look over his shoulder. This one filled with dim satisfaction, rather than amusement. 

“You continue to surprise me.” He turned around, eyeing her in contemplation. “All right. Let us talk. Preferably somewhere more…” He cast a bland look around. “Interesting than this.” 

Eleine followed Solas up Haven’s steps, breath misting before her in a sigh. “The fade, Solas?” Distaste rang in her every word. 

He turned to give her an amused quirk of his lips. “You cannot avoid it forever, Inquisitor.” 

“I was hoping to avoid it for at least a few more hours,” she snarked, turning to take the empty hovel in. “It’s been a fade saturated night.” Despite the sounds of talking and laughter and stomping, metal feet, she could see no one but them. Just falling snow, pine trees and distant mountains. “Why here?” 

Solas kept walking, and she followed along, letting his words chase away just that little bit more of her worries. 

 

By the time she left Solas’ tent, letting his quiet “Good luck, Inquisitor” steady her steps, the horizon was warming with pinks and oranges. Almost none of her people were awake. Some sentries and soldiers gave her wary looks as she passed, but most spluttering campfires she skirted were surrounded by sleeping bodies.

She was shaking, and heavy, and aching. She had maybe two hours before they would begin the march again. Two hours to speak with him. 

Cullen’s tent seemed different, changed, since she came to stand in front of it the hours ago. 

Her foot lingered over the threshold. It stared back at her, planted, still. How was she to tear it up, and move it forward? Into that room, to that sight, to the reality that he had seen too much of her too quickly. 

It was not as though she had had no intention of telling him her truths. That she had killed her brother at a very tender age was not something she had intended to come out so soon, however. Bitter hate swelled through her stomach. Of course, Hagan had taken even this from her. 

No doubt he had known, in some way, that she was developing connections. What better way to tear them from her, than degrading her to the monster she had been, all those years ago? It wasn’t quite right of course. And her foot still on the line, unable to cross into Cullen’s room, was the truth of it enough. 

t hadn’t been all Hagan. The mist was… mostly at fault. And her base nature, that of a terrified, abused animal, was equally as guilty. Her fingers clenched around her arms, spasming before releasing. Eleine jerked the tent flap aside, and stepped inside, eyes straining in the sudden darkness. 

She had known what she would find. But the heavy weight crushing his shoulders to the floor, his bowed back and hidden face, was something she couldn’t bear to see. 

Cullen was sat at his desk, chair pushed back a few feet, elbows leaning on his thighs, head in his hands. He looked so alone, in the middle of an empty tent, filled with stillness and bare corners and no rugs and warmth and candles.

He did not look up when she came in, and she had the feeling he had not even heard her. 

What was she to say first? Look at me? You have seen me now, are you going to leave me? 

They weren’t baseless insecurities, groundless anxieties. 

How did she begin her apologies? For the worries she had caused, the disappointment, the disgust, the fear?

The pain? Words lingered on her tongue, stones weighing her down. 

How did she begin to explain the complexities of what she was, of who she wanted to be? 

Was it enough just to say sorry? Insides jumbling, feeling as though they wanted to leap from her and fly away, Eleine forged ahead. 

“I told you,” Eleine rasped, “I am not the good woman you thought I was.” 

Cullen jerked up, eyes wide on her face. It seemed he truly hadn’t heard her come in. And Maker, his face. What lines she thought the days had chased away were gouged back in. Deeper, perhaps, than there had been even at his lowest. 

Her eyes stung as though they had been struck. What had she done to him? 

“I warned you.” A tear seared down her cold cheek. “I’m a monster, Cullen. I warned—” 

“No!” The chair was flung back across the tent, upturning. Cullen was tall, on his feet. He filled the space with his anger, with his thunderous face. She recoiled.

He was right, that wasn’t it. Where were her apologies? 

“I’m sorry—”

“You have nothing to apologise for. Don’t… _you_ told me.” He strode to her, hands grasping her arms, and pulling her close to him. With anyone else it would have been aggression. The closeness a method of intimidation. But this was Cullen, and she knew, knew to trust him. 

His face loomed above her, blocking out the sight of the tent, filling her world with his lines and curves and sharp edges. His amber eyes sheened, his stubble glowed. “Do not apologise as though you stand with them. Now let me tell you, do not apologise for things you are not.” 

Solas had been right that his wound had been healed. His cheek was smooth and untarnished. Her fingers trailed over the pinkened skin there, and his grip lost some of its intensity. He watched her, quiet, sullen. There was anger in his eyes, and confusion. And hurt. 

“I’m…” Okay? Eleine wasn’t, had never really been okay. But she wanted him to know that she was safe now, in this moment. In his arms. “It’s over now. I’m here. And I am so sorry for… for worrying you.” 

He was trembling. Slight at first, in his fingers, then it travelled up his arms and chest and his anger sharpened face dissolved beneath the ripples. He drew his bottom lip in between his teeth and bit down. 

This was not the reason she wanted to see him do that. 

“I couldn’t find you in the ash.” His voice broke. “I was too late to the scene, you were attacked and I—” 

“I hid from you.” The truth acted as a blow to his face. He recoiled from her, and a new emotion entered his eyes. Fear. “It wasn’t because I do not trust you.” She did, she was here after all. Come to place her truths in his hands. “I became afraid of losing again.”

He looked away from her, and there was a stiffness about his lips she didn’t like. “I don’t understand.” 

And that was the crux of it. He did not understand her, because he did not know what had happened to her. It settled over them, this pressing knowledge. Her heart banged against her rib cage. Trepidation, fear, anxiety. Her old friends. They lit her nerves on fire, her skin hyper-sensitive, her hands shaking. 

This had been too much too fast for them. Their relationship had truly only just began, and they had both already admitted neither of them had entertained such a connection before. How were they going to come out of this, together? 

But still she could feel his warmth and hardness in her hand, the phantom of their stolen moments in the night. His trust, his hope. All he wanted them to be, all she wanted them to be, caught in that one, amber embossed moment. 

So she began, voice cutting through the tent in a ruined rasp. “I am used to… pretending that these events did not happen.” He knew which one she was referring to. He was watching her from his periphery, but keeping his face away. He looked a wary animal, eyeing you to see if you would hurt them. “Externally, at least,” she continued, clutching her arms, holding her insides in. “I do not like to remember, and speaking of them gives them life.” It was her turn to look away, to stop him seeing her fear-filled eyes. “But you told me of your experience in the circle, of your sufferings and… you trusted me.” _Bang, bang, bang._ Her heart ached with its beats. She looked back to him, extending a hand, out towards him. She grazed her fingers down his chest. “I want to try and trust you the same way.” Her voice was so small in the tent. Cullen finally turned back to her, eyes misty. Still, he did not speak, though he moved his jaw as though chewing on something, working over words. 

Eleine swallowed. “I cannot tell you everything now. It’s long and terrible and when I do tell you, I understand that you may want to leave me.” 

He jerked, galvanised, fire springing back into his eyes. “Eleine.” 

“It’s true, Cullen,” she cut back, temper stirring, “I will tell you. What I did. Who I did it to. Why.” She deflated. “But for now. Ask me what you want to know. I’ll answer whatever you ask, and I promise you I will not lie.” 

Cullen was quiet, watching her beneath hooded brows. Titling his head down at an angle that cast terrible shadows across his face. He turned away, and Eleine’s stomach fell to the floor. Unlike their usual heat, there was a chill between them.

Cullen returned to his chair, and sat himself down, movements laboured and rough, resuming the position she found him in. He was bracing himself, she knew, to hear all that he had never known about her, all that she kept from him. 

“You once spoke of a friend in the circle.” Eleine cocked her head to the side, somewhat startled. She had thought he would want to know about her brother first. 

“Yes.” Emotions squeezed her throat. “In my life, before… you and the Inquisition and Dorian…” Her heart squeezed a little. “And perhaps Solas – I have had only two friends. The first was Adahlen.” Cullen looked up at the crack of her voice. There was something in his eyes. Suspicion, perhaps. Eleine took a few heavy breaths. “He was an elf boy who I met in the forest outside Trevelyan Castle.” Cullen rose his eyebrow, leaning back in his chair, legs splayed, one arm crooked and holding his head up. On any other occasion she may have enjoyed the stature. But at the thought of Adahlen, she was seeing less and less of the tent, and more of the spectre from last night. Was that really eddies of violet and jade around his chair?

“We barely understood one another.” A smile ghosted across her lips, and then the sight before her dipped to that old forest. “But he did know what tears meant. He gave me an Elfroot one day. I still don’t know why.” A cracked laugh left her lips. “I guess he ran out of ideas to comfort me.” Eleine held herself up, straight, tight. Her fingers wound around her arms. She shook the image of the clearing away.

“We began to play together, to learn together. He treated me so well, when no one else did.” She paused, thinking of better times, of a childhood lost. It took her a few moments, a few swallows, to form the next words. “He was the first person I loved. Cherished.” A tear left the confines of her eye. She felt it track the whole way down her face, slow, aching, before it fell from her jaw to the floor.

“Samael came upon us one day, no doubt having followed me to hurt me in some manner.” Cullen sat up straight, eyes deadly on her face. He was an intense man when he wanted to be. He was not quite the innocent individual she had first assumed. His hands were balled into fists. He seemed to know what was coming. 

Eleine nodded, fingers spasming, and the ugly thing in her core reared. “He killed Adahlen.” Up it rose, up up. Cullen’s nostrils flared, and he looked every part the soldier he was. “Killed him.” Her voice was a low growl. Eleine covered her mouth, and wrestled with herself for a few moments. One breath in, one breath out. 

She struggled through the strangle-hold time and denial and pain had placed around her throat. When it came, her voice was a whisper, scraping through the air of the tent. “I killed him for it.” She kept her eyes on Cullen, she could not look away, could not run away anymore. He was so still. Stiller than she had ever seen him, and as unreadable as he had been the first few months of their acquaintance. He seemed dipped in shadows. She wished, _wished_ she could see him. Could be in his arms. 

“This is how my magic woke. In desperation and pain.” Her head fell back, and she shook her hair out of her face. Her eyes closed. “For many years that is all I used it for – all I knew it was for.” Part of him must suspect now, that she had committed sins against his people. He must sense it coming. Something he truly did not want to hear. Something she wasn’t ready to tell. 

She darted to safer ground. “My father’s soldiers saw the flames in the forest, and came to investigate. They dragged me back to him.” Her lips quirked into a wry smile. “And once Hagan realised I was not willing to hurt innocents to practice my magic, he sent me off to Ostwick circle.” Eline opened her eyes again, and began to pace, feeling like a spirit misplaced in the world of the tent. 

“His reach there is… pervasive. He is very close to the Templar order.” Eleine kept her eyes on the ground, away from Cullen. It was easier to talk of her pains when she did not have to see his reactions. “For the first few months, I was terrified. Damaged from losing Adahlen, I wanted to be alone, to sink away from the cruelty of the Templars. I was…” She stilled, eyes going to a distant place, seeing another her. “Nothing of what I am today.” Eleine sighed, exhaustion pricking at her eyes, making heavy her limbs. “I hid and I bended. And no one approached me, except a single girl. Anabelle.”

Cullen’s chaired creaked, and she knew he remembered the name. Another phantom smile crossed her lips. It had been better times when she first told him of Anabelle. She’d been able to see all of him then, his shy face, his shy hopes. His steady strength he leant to her without knowing it. 

“She was a year older than me, and as alone as I was. Anabelle had a similar… familial experience. Once her family discovered she was a mage, she was… maltreated.” Eleine put her back to Cullen, feeling his eyes on her begin to burn. The line between the tent flaps made her fingers twitch. “When no beating was enough to banish the power in her, she was sent away to the circle. She taught me a lot. About maintaining your face. Never let them know how much they hurt you, she would tell me. _When you feel your worst, look your best. They can’t get you then_.” It was like a chant to her now, a prayer. 

She was glad he could not see the warping of her face, the drip of cold cruelty solidifying. “It wasn’t pride, it was an inner strength I craved. But _they didn’t like it._ ” What he could hear was the violence in her voice. She could not even hear him breathing. 

“The Templars did not like that she didn’t bend, that she would smile at them after a strike.” Her voice drew thin, a bowstring being pulled tighter and tighter and tighter. “She used to sneak into my room every night. But one night. One night she didn’t come.” It snapped. She had to turn around now. Had to show him her pain, as he had shown her his. Cullen’s face was a picture of trepidation and creeping horror. It stole across his face, opening his mouth, widening his eyes, dulling them. “I was awake all night. I knew it. I knew something was wrong. They might have caught her, someone cruel enough might have been hurting her right then and there.” She swallowed, fighting for the rest of the truth to come out. “I could not leave my room.” There was bile searing her tongue. “I was rooted. I had no inner strength.” Cullen jerked as though he was about to rise, to move to her. But he stayed, and she stood stranded before him, alone. 

“It took hours. It was morning before I snuck to her room. She wasn’t there.” Eleine closed her eyes, just for a moment, one last moment of reprieve. “I knew,” the words heaved out of her, “I knew. I went to the courtyard. Where they would bring bodies to be burned.” Her eyes found Cullen’s wide, shinning amber ones. “They were standing around her. And one of them… one of them smiled and I knew, I knew, I knew what—” her voice broke into a yell, pitching with violence and anger, “—I knew what they had _done_!”

Cullen seemed to shrink back into his seat, weak. Pained. 

Eleine burned on the inside, her words turning harsh, sharp. Accusing. 

“She had been beaten to death. A child.” This was the Templar order she knew. This was who his people had been, to her. Her voice smoothed out into a lethal blade, all edges and cruel promises. “And suddenly I remembered what my magic was.” Cullen’s hands gripped the seat as though he was about to fall through the floor. Eleine licked her lips. “I took it, and wrapped it around myself, into my core. It became who I was. Something to hurt and damage and _keep them away_. It was a weapon, and so was I.”  
Cullen’s mouthed moved, feeble. “Eleine.” 

She looked away, rolling her neck and taking deep breaths. Her boots were crusty with ash. She lashed her anger inside, deeper, deeper, out of his sight. “Commander Helaine once asked me, without your magic, what are you? For a _long_ time my magic was everything I was.” Eleine looked back to Cullen. There was nothing but steel inside her now. “It was my strength. Without it – I was weak. Underneath it – I was weak. I was… young inside. Commander Helaine seemed to know this at first glance.” Eleine gave a dry smile. “You have so much potential, she told me, but you squander it on suspicion and fear.” 

Eleine sighed again, as though the action would tide away the events of the last few days, and the troubles of her life. “I was hiding from what I truly am. I’m weak. And fragile.” Never quite enough, never fast enough, to save someone who deserved it. “I waste my magic on fear and cloaking myself.” Eleine released her crushing grip on her arms, finger by finger. “But there’s not enough violence, not enough killing in this world, enough to satisfy my vulnerabilities.” 

_Hollow, hungry, it yearns. But you do not understand it_. “I think it’s time I find another way.” It was time to understand herself, and for her loved ones to understand her too. 

“More than Hagan, more than Corypheus, my greatest enemy, is myself.”

Cullen was on his feet. 

“Cullen.” He was moving to her. “The greatest threat to me, is me.”

He plucked her up, hands grasping her bottom and torso and lifting with ease. Without a thought she wound her legs around his waist. He was shaking, as he pulled her tight against his chest. She tucked her face beneath his chin, arms caught between herself and him. She sought his warmth, and found it, despite the cold steel beneath his mantle and between herself and his skin. 

He was a sun, all gold and heat. 

Eleine was crying, had been crying from the moment he touched her. 

His hands stroked up and down her back, occasionally stilling and grasping, but always caressing. Perhaps he was crying too.

“Stay with me.” His voice was muffled by emotion, and thin with exhaustion. “Stay with me.” 

Eleine clung to him, legs squeezing his waist. “Thank you, Cullen. Thank you.” 

He held her tighter, burying his face in her hair. She felt like a weightless leaf in his arms, full of life but easily crushed – if he squeezed too much, pressed her corners inward... But as he walked backwards, and lowered them onto his chair, his hold never became a cage.

It was a long time before either of them said anything. The quiet stretched out and out, wrapping them up in their pocket of the morning. 

Eleine traced a pattern down his chest plate, drawing strange shapes and tracking the lines of her reflection. Her eyes, pale chips in the dim light, were lined with exhaustion but stable. They lingered rather than jerk from place to place the way they had before. 

Amber beside smoke. It was an odd combination. Perhaps the ash in her eyes would one day choke the warmth out of his amber. 

Cullen’s fingers toyed with her hair, running strands between the pads of his fingers, twisting them and settling them back down again. 

Or perhaps the light of his amber would find hers, those few dusty whites that remained. 

The corner of Eleine’s mouth snuck up. “You don’t have a bedroll in here, do you Commander?” 

Cullen froze, and she felt a clump of her hair plop back down on her head. “I… had intended—” 

It spurted out of her, a bubble of light in her chest, bursting outwards in a laugh. “ _Cullen._ ”

“There was— I was… and then the, the everything and—” 

Eleine laughed again, drew back, let her head tip to the ceiling, and kept laughing. “So you have me, my fantastic self, all alone, all to yourself,” she lilted, looking down at him, and cocking her head to the side, “and yet no bed to take advantage of it.” 

Cullen groaned, a low, embarrassed sound that was tinged with other things too. It was desire and amusement and happiness in one, rumbling note. “Maker, Eleine. You sound like Dorian.” 

A strangled noise of laughter and disgust left her mouth. “Do _not_ tell him that. If he so much as thinks I’m under his influence.” She shook her head, chest warm at the sight of Cullen’s playful smile. 

“He certainly does not need the extra ego.” He huffed, rolling his eyes, those perfect eyes. “But if you need some rest I can send for—”

“I don’t want to rest.” She clasped his chin between her fingers, pulling him to face her, to meet her eyes. “Not yet.” 

He watched her for a few moments, then licked his lips. Her heart picked up, and his warmth washed over her again, but it was filled with desire, this time. 

“You need it,” he breathed, eyelashes descending over his eyes, leaving them half open. 

She hummed something in response, finding his face too close for her to continue watching his eyelashes.

Cullen enclosed her lips in his, taking them with tender strokes, and she knew in that moment – it had not been her who had moved forward.


	29. Cullen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoy lovelies! xx
> 
> Lots of love, as always <3

As they reached the roots of Skyhold’s mountains, the uneven terrain gave way to smoother paths, winding through Emprise du Lion’s forests. The landscape remained icy and white, drawing their ranks close and tight, huddling for heat. 

Sometimes, when morale would stutter, someone would begin to sing – a chantry hymn, a folk song, a bar tune, it hardly mattered – and others would join. Thin voices rallied with thin voices, and soon the whole of the Inquisition seemed to be singing. 

It made her and her companions uneasy to be making so much noise in open territory, but every time Eleine made a move to put an end to it Cassandra would argue they needed it, and dug in till Eleine acquiesced. 

She had expected some disquiet on the side of her people after the incident, but they swallowed Leliana’s explanation of a larger attack with ease. Several mages sought her out when they would make camp, asking for tips on maintaining that much fire at once without burning themselves. 

How was she to tell them she did not know?

The further and further they went from Skyhold, and the more dire their reality became, the more Eleine missed Dorian. The cold, the eventuality that they were marching towards, the dwindling resources… it was beginning to wear on her people, and on herself. 

Dorian would have had the best way to express everyone’s distaste.

Her eyes ached to see the aurora lights with him one more time. To be tucked up into his side, and have an ally. 

Though she and Solas had come to an understanding, it was not the same as the gentle care that existed between herself and Dorian. 

Eleine’s mount carved trails through the snow as they dipped into the shadow of the pine forest. Her companions were elsewhere with her people, and she had a moment of quiet, a moment of peace. 

“Eleine.” 

She turned around and smiled to see Cullen trotting his mount up to her. Something in her chest eased. The pine and spruce trees were so thick she could barely see the rest of the Inquisition around them. 

She thought he would say something as he drew up beside her but there was an onrush of spice in her nose, and then warmth pressed against her front. 

Cullen cupped her face in his hands, pulling her against him, lips fluttering across her face in tender pecks. Eleine gave a startled laugh as he kissed her eyelids, before taking his own cheeks in her hands drawing him down to her mouth. She gave him a quick kiss and nipped on his bottom lip. 

Cullen gave a strangled sort of growl, and she felt their legs knocking together as their horses were pulled closer. His hand smoothed down her side, fingertips brushing against the side of her breast, searing across the expanse of her hip, and leaving her panting. 

As his tongue slid into her mouth against hers, Eleine released her grip on his face to tangle her fingers in his curls, fingernails grazing over his scalp. Cullen did growl, now, his hand squeezing her thigh. Eleine opened her mouth beneath his in a breathy moan, and Cullen’s thumb burned closer to her inner thigh. 

And then the shade was ripped from them, and light pierced through their embrace. Cullen drew back, and she was left with the cold and the sight of him, lips wet and swollen, eyes dark and hair ruffled. Eleine licked her lips, core clenching as his eyes followed the movement. 

They had come out of the cover of the trees, exposed to the rest of the Inquisition milling on beside them. Eleine fought with herself, gripping onto the tail end of her control. 

Cullen seemed to be doing much the same. “Come to my tent, tonight?” 

Warmth pulsed in Eleine’s cheeks, despite the cold trying to nip at her nose. “As you desire, Commander,” she teased. 

He gave her a tilted smile, full of heat, before kicking his horse onwards, to the front of the lines. 

 

He was waiting for her, when she slipped into his tent that night. By the looks of the scuffed dirt behind him, he had been pacing back and forth. For a moment her heart lurched in worry – perhaps he was anxious for a conversation he meant to have? 

But then he was grasping her elbows, snagging three quick kisses from her. 

He had the gall to pull back and look shy. “Hello,” he breathed, small smile on his lips, colour in his cheeks. The candle light made smooth and soft all his lines and edges. 

A fist squeezed her heart. “Hmm,” she replied, fingers reaching out to grasp his fur mantle, and tug him back to her. She kissed the scar above his lip, smiling at the stubble poking her soft lips. Then she kissed the bridge of his nose, the hollow of his eyes, and his forehead. 

Cullen sighed beneath her ministrations, body seeming to loosen. His hands on her elbows lost some of their intensity, sliding up and down her arms in gentle strokes. 

She gave him one last kiss on his cheekbone, before tucking her head into his chest, arms winding up around his neck. Cullen’s arms circled her waist, bringing her close against his front, mumbling content words she couldn’t quite make out. 

Her cheeks began to hurt from her smile, and she threaded her fingers into his hair. 

“Stay with me?” he asked, voice dipped low and rumbling. 

A part of her shivered. “Always,” she released in a breath. She knew he had heard it when his arms tightened a little. 

Cullen pulled back, and dipped down for another quick kiss. Then he stepped back, and gave her a small playful smile. “I remembered.” 

Eleine rose a brow, happiness a warm thing in her chest. “Oh?” Her cheeks were hot, her limbs hyper-sensitive.

Cullen tilted his head to the side, and looked over his shoulder. Then looked back at her, expectant. 

Eleine held her knowing smile down, widening her eyes in fake confusion. He looked delighted at the chance to surprise her. How was she to reveal she knew, now? With him seeming to buzz with excitement? 

Eleine made a show of peeking around his large, wonderful frame, and cocking her head in contemplation. Sure enough, at the back of his tent was a small cot. Not nearly big enough for the two of them, but there was nothing better as an excuse for them to be in close quarters through the night. 

“Oh,” she said again, feigning surprise. 

Apparently not well. Cullen’s lips drew down – and was that a pout? “You knew, didn’t you?” 

“Yes,” she admitted, lifting her hand to cover her smile. 

“Hm.” He reached out to grab her, hands gliding over her ass to the back of her thighs, and picked her up. Eleine laughed as he knotted her legs around him, swinging her around. 

“Oh my, Commander,” Eleine lilted, “taking me to bed already?” 

Cullen gave an embarrassed sort of snort, as he carried her to the cot, and sat down on the edge. He arranged her in his lap and kicked off his boots. “You’re tired,” he responded, but as she pulled back to look at him, there was mischief in his eyes. 

“What are you saying about my complexion?” Eleine poked, tilting her head and smiling at him.

He fumbled over the words, lips seeming numb. “I didn’t mean—”

“Yes?” Eleine found a buckle to his mantle, fingers pulling it loose. 

“You are always… Maker’s breath I never meant—”

“Hm?” She kissed his neck, and he cut off. She found the last buckle, and unfastened it, pulling back to watch as the mantle slipped from his shoulders. Then she tugged his gloves off, hand by hand, and did the same to hers. 

He watched her, quiet, face settled and content. “Come to bed with me?” Eleine breathed, her smile turning secret. Did he remember the last time she asked that? 

Cullen gave her such a soft, tender smile. “You wouldn’t remember,” he said, “but you said that to me once before.” 

Eleine paused, blinking at him. He could not be serious, could he? “Oh?” she asked, brain caught up in a tangle, moving slow through the mire of her confusion. 

“For a moment I thought…” he looked away, seeming to fidget, “but I knew I would not have been so lucky that you meant…” He cleared his throat, and Eleine felt as though her world had been slapped a few feet to the right. 

“ _Cullen_.” Eleine cried, but could not help laughing. How ridiculous, how honestly ridiculous. He looked at her, eyes confused, and a tinge wary. “I was inviting you to my bed. I was inviting you to _lay_ with me.” 

His mouth dropped open. And then such colour sprung up in his cheeks, laughter bubbled and bubbled from Eleine. He rubbed the back of his neck, spluttering. “I—” he stumbled, “how was I to know? I thought… surely you must have been asking another man.” 

“There was no one else in your tent, Cullen!” she cried, voice going shrill in astonishment and laughter. 

“I merely – Maker’s breath.” He covered his face in his hands. “You were always concerned with how much I slept so I merely assumed you were. Oh, Maker.” 

“I thought you had rejected me,” Eleine protested, holding a hand to her stomach that seemed to hurt from all the laughing. “I’d been trying to woo you for the whole day and you gave not one show of interest.” 

He seemed flabbergasted. “No you did not.” 

“Yes.” She batted his chest. “I did.” 

“No,” he insisted, giving a slight shake of his head. 

“ _Yes_.” She nodded her head like she was talking to a child. “If I looked at you, you would look elsewhere. If I approached you, you would step back. If I flirted, you would stumble through apologies of tasks requiring you elsewhere.” 

“No,” he groaned, face meeting his hands once more. She gave another laugh. “How was I to know you wanted someone like me?”

“Ha!” Was he blind? Somewhat crippled in the ocular department, at least? 

“You were so strong, so kind,” Cullen continued, looking up at her, beseeching. “When you approached me, and said what you did, I just thought… Maker. Surely it’s for another man or woman in the room.” 

“No, you right fool!” Eleine swatted at him again, before grasping his cheeks, tight, authoritative. “I wanted _you. You,_ Cullen.” He seemed to melt in some way beneath her, amber eyes flickering with emotion. “How are you so completely unaware of your own appeal?” 

He was most certainly coloured now. “I…” She waited, but his mouth stayed open with no more words being brought forth. 

“How do you look into the mirror and not see this?” She waved up and down his body, and he fidgeted in embarrassment. She paused. “Do you not have a mirror? Is that it?” 

He snorted. “I don’t, but I have seen myself before.” 

“Maker.” She sat back on his knees. “How recently?” She did not like the fact that he seemed to be seriously considering that question. She shook her head. “Honestly.” Her hand cupped his cheek, and her lips turned up in a fond, fond smile. “You silly man.”

As she captured his plump lips in a kiss, she wondered at the lightness in her chest. The ease in her stomach, the slackness of her limbs. 

She gave a slight jolt as Cullen’s fingers traced down the edge of her armour’s dipping neckline. She shivered at the slight brush of his fingertips, down, down her skin. They found a buckle, one of the many her armour possessed, and tugged it free. 

Eleine grinned into the kiss, and felt his answering smile. 

The game was on. 

He fumbled with her buckles as she did his, wrestling with the straps of his chest plate and arm guards, while nipping on his bottom lip. 

He rumbled his appreciation, pulling back his mouth to latch it onto her exposed neck instead. Eleine gave a surprised cry, fingers stalling for a moment. Cullen sucked on the sensitive skin, wicked mouth doing wicked things and smirking all the while. So he thought to distract her, did he?

Maker, she did not want him to stop, but what was more important? The delicious feeling on his tongue gliding over her skin, or winning? Cullen had loosened her outer robe enough to yank it off, throwing it to the floor. 

Winning. 

Eleine rolled her hips, and Cullen jerked, mouth ripping of her neck to gasp in surprise. She bit down on his bottom lip, rolling again, and he _growled_. Hands grasped her hips, and she tore the last of his buckles undone. 

She tossed his armour to the ground behind them, hardly caring for their loud clatter and clank. Cullen gave a short noise that was something between an “oh” and “oi”, and she giggled. Before he could make any more protests, or continue his own attacks, her fingers found the bottom of his under-shirt, and lifted it up. 

Ah. 

Her concertation scrambled. 

His tight stomach and muscled chest flashed into view as she pulled the cotton shirt up to his neck, and over his head. Scars pearled across his skin in a canvass of lost moments and past experiences. 

Maker, it took her several moments before she could tear her eyes away from the fair hair leading down to his pants, and several moments after _that_ to resist scraping her fingernails through them. 

Her eyes drank in the gleaming, golden chest hair, the dip of his collar bone, the bump of his abs. Up and down his chest moved in short, shallow breaths. She looked up to find him watching her, cheeks warm, eyes searching and nervous. 

“How is it you do not know how gorgeous you are, Commander?” she breathed. 

He took in a jagged breath. He had braced himself on the cot, leaning backwards on his arms, letting her look at him. 

Maker, she had this? Eleine bit her lip and traced her fingers down his abs into that wonderful trail of hair. Cullen shivered.

“What, were you sculpted?” Eleine quipped. 

A laugh startled out of him, and she watched him smile in the candlelight. All of him seemed to glow. His exposed skin, his hair. His eyes. 

His body had never been for pleasure, she realised now. It had been a vessel to fight, to protect. Perhaps he had never considered his body, or muscles, or eyes, as something to attract.

Poor, silly man. 

She placed a hand on his shoulder, exerting pressure. His eyes flicked between her own, but he followed her guidance, and laid down. Knees either side of his waist, she sat atop his stomach, straddling him. 

Eleine looked down at her rumpled outfit and laughed. She was half-undressed, leather askew and Silverite scales half hanging off. 

She flicked a look up to see Cullen giving her a satisfied grin. 

“What in Andraste’s good name did you do?” She wrestled with the last of her buckles, undoing each scale and layer of leather. Cullen watched her struggle, chest rumbling with laughter. 

Finally she stripped herself off to her breast amplifier, and contemplated her pants and boots. She did not want to get up to take them off. Cullen could sleep in his pants, they were not fantastic, but manageable. 

Lurker leather, however, was far less comfortable. 

Her fingers grasped the top button on her pants, only to have Cullen’s hand clamp over them. Eleine looked up at him, surprised. 

His eyes were on their hands, dark and amorous. He pulled her fingers away, drawing himself up onto his elbows. She watched him as he undid the button himself, wetting his lips. Then he moved to the next and the next, sliding them undone with nimble fingers. He looked up at her, a searing, brief glance, before returning his attention to her now open pants.

He touched the soft skin of her stomach, leading down to her pelvis, with feather-light fingertips. He ghosted them along the top of her cotton underwear, and pulled his bottom lip in between his teeth. 

Eleine leaned back, neck losing the strength to hold her head up properly, and watched him, head tilted to the side, through half-lidded eyes. 

Cullen grasped the sides of the pants, pulling them down, down. Eleine moved up onto her knees, and he leaned forward to kiss her stomach as he pulled them over her ass. 

One hand slid them down her thighs to her knees, but his other stayed on her ass. Placing an open mouthed kiss on her hip bone, he squeezed his fingers. 

Eleine had to thread her fingers through his curls to steady herself, moaning out a short: “ _Cullen._ ”

He rumbled an answer she could not quite hear, and both his hands took hold of her hips, pushing her back down onto him. He had pulled himself up properly now, and gave her neck a wet, heated kiss. 

As he bit down, sucking up the sensitive skin, his hands grazed upwards to her ribcage, fingertips just brushing the underside of her breasts. Her breaths came hard and fast, now. Just as she had done before, he pressed downwards, and she moved as he wished, heart thumping. Could he feel her pulse leaping, in her throat? 

Eleine was pushed down onto the yielding cot, legs crooked over Cullen’s, at either side of his torso. Her ass brushed against his clothed inner things, and they were close, so close to those places of pleasure and—

Cullen’s hands roamed over her skin, and she shivered beneath him, feeling his answering shudder more than she saw it. Their rushed breaths filled the tent with sound. He dragged his hands down her thighs, thumbs brushing the sensitive skin of her inner thigh, and hooked his fingers in the lip of her pants. 

He dragged them to her mid-calves, kissing her now exposed knee, before grasping one leg, and beginning to undo her boot laces. 

One shoe, then the next thudded to the ground, and her pulse spiked at each sound. 

Then in one motion, he grabbed her pants, yanked, and she was free. A flicker of mischief went through her, and before her legs lowered to the cot again, she hooked them over his shoulders. 

She felt exposed, open, and knew she was – almost, he could almost see everything. Cullen dropped her pants to the floor, eyes burning on her cotton covered core. 

He wet his lips again, and trembling, pulled his eyes away, to rove over the rest of her body. He took in the sight of her breasts, contained and leashed beneath their coverings, yet pushing, pushing to be freed. “Eleine,” he mumbled. “Maker’s breath.” He drank in the sight of her face, same as she drank in his. “You’re beautiful.” 

Eleine squirmed beneath him, wanting to touch, needing to touch. “Cullen.”

He leaned over her, straining to reach, and gave her a hungry kiss. Then he tunnelled his arms under Eleine, startling a laugh from her, and pulled her back up. 

He wiggled them, and laid back down, replacing her in her position on his hips. Smug smile in place, he looked up at her as though nothing had happened. 

She gave another, breathless laugh. “Hmm.” She let hair slip over her bare shoulder. “My Commander has become bold.” 

He reached out and rubbed the dark strands between his fingers. Then a shadow passed through his eyes, and a spike of worry went through her stomach. “Eleine?” Cullen asked. His eyes were elsewhere, in some distant place, though they set upon her. 

“Yes?” she hedged, confused and a lot wary. 

Cullen looked away, off to the side. “Does it really not bother you that I am… untitled, outside the Inquisition?” 

Eleine felt her brain stutter and inch along. She felt silly for the way her stomach had swooped before his question. 

Had she ever made any indication she cared for nobility? Or even her own _festering_ status? Had she not, on multiple occasions, said she hated the concept? “Cullen, I was my father’s prisoner.” His eyes snapped up to her, and there was a spark of something there. “Sent away to be corralled and… animalised in the circle.” She looked away from him, shaking her head, her fire’s hungry claws scraping against her skin. His hands came up to rub her sides. “And my mother was,” she took in a shuddering breath, “I suppose one could say, insane. My brother perhaps more so,” she muttered the last to herself, knowing he would hear it anyway. Eleine tried to pull all the pieces of herself back together and caught his worried eyes. There was a tinge of regret there, and she had to smile. 

Why had he asked? Perhaps… perhaps he was thinking of the future. Of their future. There was a thrill of something through her.

She cupped his cheek. “I could care less for titles, Cullen.” His face loosened from the pinched expression of worry he had worn, and he smiled back at her. She flicked his nose. “Honestly, what gave you the thought I would?” 

“I thought I should state all the reasons you may not want me before we moved on,” he mumbled, but there was humour in his voice. 

She pinched his cheek, and pulled, the same way she did to Dorian and Sven when they were being silly. “Shall we talk about how I don’t deserve you, then?”

He snatched at her hand, pressing her palm against his lips. “There is no such thing,” he mumbled against her hand. He tugged her down, and she braced herself on one arm, head hovering above his own. “I never thought I would be so lucky to be this happy,” he whispered.

Eleine’s insides melted. “Me too, Cullen.” 

Then she darted forward, and nipped his bottom lip again. Cullen laughed, grasping her waist, and flipped them over. 

The sounds of their laughter and tussle filled the tent. 

 

Eleine woke hours later, groggy from strange dreams, but content. Half-asleep, it was hard to pinpoint exactly why her body was so languid and warm, or her head so comfortable. Until she shifted a touch, and Cullen let out a sigh in his sleep. 

Eleine blinked herself awake, feeling with each one a new sensation of her position. Cullen had wrapped himself around her in his sleep, one large arm holding her to his chest, the other cushioning her head, his legs tangling in her own. His bare chest pressed against her back, tucking her into warmth and safety. 

Eleine made a promise to herself never to bother setting up her own tent again. She would simply retreat to Cullen’s when no one was watching, and leave before anyone saw. 

And for the weeks following, that was exactly what she did. 

 

Eleine pulled her horse over to Solas’s hart. “I had a dream last night that you were critiquing my clothing choices, was that real?” 

Solas blinked at her. “No… I was elsewhere in the fade.”

Eleine smirked. “I thought so. Wearing those shabby apostate robes that you do, I was quite surprised at your gall.” 

His lips twitched in amusement. “I happen to think my choice of finery is more than acceptable,” he returned, eyes on the horizon framed by his hart’s horns. 

Eleine hummed. She felt as light as the falling snow. “It’s a blessing you are not the one in charge of uniform design, then.” 

He gave an entertained snort. “I am sure your friend Dorian would say much the same about you.” 

“It just seemed like something you would do,” Eleine continued, patting the shoulder of her horse idly. Solas shot her a look in question, and she gave a slashing smile at the wariness in his grey eyes. 

“Shoving your way into my dreams to criticise me.”

Solas rolled his eyes, and did not deign her with more of a response. 

“Ain’t that right,” Varric gruffed, nudging his own mount up to them. “You shoulda heard what he was sayin’ to me and Seeker yesterday, Terror.” 

“Oh?” 

Their travels continued in much the same way, pitching into moments of worry, apprehension and disquiet. Others, she laughed and loved with Cullen, Solas and Varric. By the time they reached the Western Approach, the Inquisition’s forces that were around her had strengthened bonds, steadied their determination and prepared for victory. Mages milled with Templars and soldiers, and elves and humans and dwarves shared mead and ale. 

 

The desert was a still, hollow place. The air was dry and motionless, and not a sand stirred or trickled in a wind. They passed carcasses of beasts too dried to identify, and cracked skeletons of souls lost to the dunes.

The Inquisition was not quiet in their rhythmic march and chants, and she didn’t want it to be, now. They were close to Adamant, just a turn at the cliff away, and even she needed something to fill the silence of this place. 

She turned, and found Cullen’s amber eyes gleaming in the moonlight, watching her. He was a spot of colour amongst the dull wash of the Inquisition, the tan of the cliff and the sand made white under the moon. Desire bloomed in her chest to race across the sands to him.

For one last touch. 

One last moment of love. 

But they had held each other the night before, not needing to say the words of care and worry they both already knew. 

Be safe, his eyes told her. Be safe, hers returned. 

Eleine was first to come upon Adamant, as she should be. The first to see their enemy, their foe, their fate. 

Stories were told, fables whispered, worries shared past cracked lips. But reality always surpassed that which your mind fostered. Perhaps it was the leagues of fragile bodies behind her, that made the sight of the fortress so horrifying. 

Up, up, into a murky sky it went. Sandstone clad in iron and steel, spikes jutting out along the walls, turrets that went higher than the eye could see – it was a place that had withstood the harshest of attacks. 

And now she was to lead the last charge against it. There would not be another. There would be no need. 

Her people had caught up to her, drawing into ranks around her. 

She would hollow Adamant out with fire, the same way the sun had scorched this place for hundreds of years. 

As she turned to survey her people, watching her, eyes shining and faces stiff with determination, she knew this would be Adamant’s last stand.

Cullen strode up beside her, and looked on the Inquisition same as her. He was a pillar of warmth and strength by her side. 

“Inquisition,” she yelled to them, and they clanked and stomped, swords on shields and boots on sand and rock. 

“For peace,” Cullen called, face ferocious. 

“For your families,” Eleine continued, as Cullen’s hand wrapped around her own. 

“We march!” Cullen finished, thrusting their joined hands into the air. 

The Inquisition roared, and bells within Adamant tolled, answering rallies trying to drown them out. 

Eleine turned back to it, and lead her people across the dunes to the fortress walls, Inquisition flags held above their ranks. 

They lingered a distance from it, too far for the marksman on the battlements to have any sort of accuracy with their arrows, and waited until they were in proper formation. The air sizzled with sweat and apprehension and resolve. 

The Inquisition stilled around her, carved into statues of war. As the night dipped into quiet and immobility, there were cranks on the cliff to their sides. 

Eleine watched as catapults tightened, and broke the stillness with their sudden whip forward. Light streaked through the disturbed sky as flaming oiled rocks were thrown at the walls. 

And then the quiet was broken, the moments of peace were lost, and the long battle began. 

Dust and sand and dirt were thrown up – alongside the gleaming steel bodies of the wardens as the rocks crushed the battlements. The fastest of their ranks, the scouters and spies and hunters, ran forward, ladders over their shoulders and their backs. Warriors and mages streamed along behind them, more rocks unleashed to distract the archers above. 

Cassandra, Solas and Varric surrounded her – Cullen at her right elbow – as she charged. She stayed level with the battering ram, and aimed for the iron enforced door to the fortress, trying not to flinch at every body that dropped around her as arrows met their targets and stones were dropped. 

The Inquisition’s blood fed the arid, white sand. 

In her periphery she could see the ladders be raised, her people flying to the battlements atop them. Some fell, crumpled, some spilt terror up above her. 

Once, twice, the ram hit, and then the door burst inwards, and she caught sight of bodies inside being flung. 

The world was cocooned in a mess of noise, dying yells and shrieks and begs stomped over with the pound of marching feet – the thundering crack of the walls interspersed with the clang of metal on metal. 

Lightning and fire made the shadows long and deep, pitting the fortress into flashes of light and sudden darkness. 

This was the first time Eleine had fought alongside almost all of the Inquisition’s forces. The attack on Haven had not been the same – she hadn’t been leading them, Cullen had. She hadn’t been protecting them, they protected each other. 

But this time, this time she was responsible for them, and she had every intention on keeping as many as she could alive. 

The small, sandy courtyard was smouldering, choking the few occupants with ash. What wardens had survived the oiled rocks and ram were strewn about amongst demons and corrupted mages. They hid in the lees of metal barriers, swords and bows shaking in their grips. 

She wondered for a fleeting moment if there were words she could say to convince them. 

And then a shade sprung up beside her, an arrow was loosed at her head, and she was carving through the closest man with a low swing of her spectral blade.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was supposed to wrap up the whole Adamant thing this chapter but honestly the scene with Cullen and Eleine just... went places. 
> 
> Hope you are all doing well and are happy and safe xx see you with another update soon!


	30. Barriers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who commented and left kudos and bookmarked and subscribed! I'm sorry to leave you waiting for another chapter - my internet decided it was time to take a vacation and left me stranded for a few dark days there. But we are back together now and seeing counselling :)
> 
> Hope you enjoy and that you are all well xx 
> 
> Lots of love <3

Solas loped past her, staff swinging like a mace in his hands, and a fist of rock went barrelling forward, punching through a metal barrier and crushing the bodies behind it. Cassandra stayed in front of Varric, blocking any close range fighters from reaching him as he loosed bolt after bolt into necks, eyes and knees. 

Eleine darted around, feet seeking sure ground in the stone amongst the sand, and sought the closest enemy. A shade reared up before her, claws primed for the kill, and the fade pulsed against her brain. 

Her sword swept upwards, impaling it, and then splintered inside the creature, spikes of white mana erupting from it. 

The shade went limp, flaking off into the air, and she tapped the ground with her booted foot, fire sizzling, leaving a flame glyph behind. Her sword smoothed out back into a keen blade. A warden swordsman ran at her, and Eleine took a few steps back, watching as the woman crossed over into her trap. 

Flame burst up beneath her, hurling her charred body into the air. 

Cassandra gave a strangled noise of pain, and Eleine turned back to see her besieged by two shades. Varric popped out from behind her, strapping three bolts into Bianca, and burying them into the closest shade. 

But rather than take it down, it screeched, drawing back and Cassandra had to ready her shield. Too slow, too slow. 

The warped arm came down, dagger claws extended. 

Eleine ran, twisted, swinging low. Claws bounced off a sizzling barrier, and she slashed upwards. The arm dropped to the ground, foul smelling gunk spilling out, bubbling across the sand. The second shade’s attention latched onto her, and together they surged forward. 

Eleine lit a spark in her mouth, sucked in a quick breath, and blew out a stream of blistering fire. It pushed them back, back, and she could see nothing more than the shadows of their gnarled forms in the flames. 

Then Solas came into view, staff slamming down, imperious, and power surged above them. With all the force of gravity they slapped down to the ground, crunching. 

Eleine clapped her jaws shut, letting the fire splutter and smoulder over the corpses. 

“Alright, Inquisitor.” Eleine turned to see Cullen stride through the shattered gates, face fierce. “You have your way in. Best make use of it.” He came to stand before her, blade in one hand, smeared with blood. “We’ll keep the main host of demons occupied for as long as we can.” There were no injuries on him she could see, just someone else blood on his cheek. 

“I’ll be fine,” she promised, breathless, “just keep the men safe.” _And yourself_ , she didn’t need to say. 

Cullen’s face twisted a little. “We’ll do what we have to, Inquisitor.” She nodded, jerky, unsettled. A man walked up behind Cullen, looking grim. “Warden Stroud will watch your back.” Cullen motioned to the man beside him. “Hawke is with our soldiers on the battlements. He is assisting them until you arrive.” 

She opened her mouth to say something. A sickening scream from above them tore through the air, and all their heads whipped up as one to watch an Inquisition soldier plummet from the wall. Bones cracked against the stone at their feet, and anger and disgust swelled inside Eleine. 

A shade’s distorted form looked down at them, and she was spinning and twisting, mana a hard, hot thing in her hand. Her spectral spear impaled its face, and it too fell from the wall. 

Her companions looked back at her, sour. 

Cullen’s face was dark and lined. “There’s too much resistance on the walls. Our men on the ladders can’t get a foothold.” His eyes flicked between hers, and the ravines on his brow deepened. “If you can clear out the enemies on the battlements, we’ll cover your advance.”   
She gave him a stiff nod. For a single moment his hand was in hers, fingers squeezing to the point of pain – then they were gone. He took in her face one last time, before turning around and running back out the gate. Who had reached for who remained unclear.

“Let’s move,” she said to her companions, and the rigid Stroud. They made it barely ten metres at a time before they ran into another demon, sometimes terrors and wraiths, but almost always hulking shades. As they traversed the veritable maze of the fortress they interrupted several rituals in which screaming wardens begged not to be killed by their own brothers and sisters.

She let them go, much to the pleasure of Stroud, but she only took such a risk of placing enemies at their back as well as their front because their cries struck a wound in her. 

Everything was grey and blurred and high speeds and straining muscles. At some point she had abandoned her blades and spears in favour of her glistening black staff and fire. Noise pounded in her head and deafened her ears, clamping around her head in a vice. 

By the time they made it to the walls, it was to find Inquisition bodies carpeting the pallid stone. Limbs and bones and empty eyes at crooked angles everywhere. 

She did not recognise a single person here, dead or alive, but those that still remained, staggering and pushing against demons, recognised her. 

“Inquisitor— the Inquisitor!” 

She was flitting amongst them in seconds, flexible and supple, barriers sheening around each poor soldier and mage, fire streaking around them in walls. Her companions were a battering ram at her side, slamming into their enemies with a force she had not seen in them before. 

There was a deep, rumbling laugh, and Eleine’s head whipped around to see a pride demon raise itself from its knees. Its grey form loomed above them, filling the thin space of the battlements, blocking out the sight of the fortress beyond it. If the clouds hadn’t already been swarming the moon, she was sure it would have eclipsed that, too. 

A few brave mages ran at it, and Eleine’s heart nearly leapt out her mouth. “Back,” she screeched, “back!” 

Only one had time to scramble out of the way as the demon’s powerful whip came sweeping around. The others were flung off the battlements, leaving gusts of charred flesh in the air. 

Eleine stamped her staff with fury, as Cassandra lashed out her grappling hook and yanked the last mage out of the way. 

Shards of ice splintered up from beneath the pride demon, and Eleine gnashed her teeth as she tried to surround it. The ice was not sharp enough to penetrate the thick exoskeleton, but Solas’ own ice joined hers, and together they managed to limit its movements enough for Varric to aim for the soft neck and inner thigh. 

Cassandra shot across the stone towards it, leaping over the bodies of their people and scattered wardens, and cleaved her blade straight into its exposed knee. 

It roared, and roared, but fell to one knee, shattering the ice in its way. 

“Solas,” Eleine yelled, “keep it down.” 

She saw his harried nod in her periphery, and again he grappled with gravity, slamming it down on the pride demon. Cassandra scrabbled up its back, blade raised high, face vicious and teeth bared. She yelled, and buried her sword into the back of its neck. 

The pride demon jerked, gurgled, and fell. 

More of her people clambered up over the side of the battlements, springing into action, and giving her and her companions wide eyed looks. 

Eleine’s chest was heaving, her body slick with sweat and chafing beneath the leathers. Her mana was dipping low, but she dared not use a lyrium potion to replenish it. 

“On,” she choked to her companions, and they laboured after her as she ran around the slumped body of the pride demon. No matter how her eyes sought red, she never once saw Cullen. 

At some point they reached Hawke, and the mage joined them, shaking from exertion His dark hair was greased to his head, slime slipping down his stricken face. 

“We must get to Clarel,” Stroud chewed, moustache stringy and matted with blood. 

Eleine gave a sharp nod, and surveyed the walls. 

Her people were out-numbered, but they were strong. She couldn’t save them all, she knew. But each new person that went down, each new scream that was torn from them, made her stomach roil in unease. She forced them to move on, and their labouring breaths became loud enough to be heard over the din.

By the time Eleine made it to Clarel and found her in the process of murdering one of her own for a blood sacrifice… 

She was angry. 

_How many of her people had she seen fall?_

She wanted blood.

_How many wardens had been sacrificed for this madness?_

And she would Maker damned have it. 

There was a ring of mages in the middle of the courtyard, green light twisting around their arms and hands. A foul, green fog polluted the air between them, and at Solas’ disturbed shifting – she knew she really wasn’t going to like what they were doing. 

Clarel and Erimond stood above them all, on a raised platform, arguing and talking in tones too low for Eleine to hear over the clamour.

And then the old woman was moving, coming up behind an old man, and slicing his throat. Eleine charged fully into the courtyard, blood surging with violence. 

“Stop them,” Erimond panicked, waving his palms out to the warden mages, “we must complete the ritual.”

Perhaps Eleine should have reasoned with Clarel the same way she had reasoned with those other wardens. Perhaps she could have saved the wardens in the courtyard, the swordsmen as well as the mages. 

But there was not an ounce of mercy left in her. Clarel had betrayed her own people, slaughtered them, and in another world, where Eleine did not make it to stop her…

Damned Thedas. 

“You stupid woman,” Eleine ground out, voice grating across the air, “you murdered your people for nothing!”

“You call fighting the blight nothing?” Erimond shot back, a moment of sick delight flitting across his face, “keeping the world safe from darkspawn, _nothing_?”

Clarel stood forward, head up, proud. Fury dripped through Eleine, thick and vile as oil. “We make the sacrifices no one else will. Our warriors die proudly for a world that will never thank them.” 

Eleine spat on the ground at her feet, too disgusted to find the words to express it.

Then Stroud was jerking up beside her, face a picture of misery and pain. “And then your Tevinter ally will binds the mages to Corypheus,” he cut. 

The woman faltered, and Erimond’s eyes flicked to her, annoyance darting across his expression. He moved over to her, and began whispering in her ear. 

Eleine counted the men and women in the courtyard. Five mages, ten soldiers. Whatever was in that mist, and perhaps rogues hiding in the shadows. She flicked her fingers at Varric behind her, and the dwarf shuffled back, creeping up the stairs behind them for a better vantage point. The warden’s watched her with sharp eyes, their grips on their swords too tight, their lips pale. 

“Bring it through,” Clarel ordered, and Eleine’s attention snapped back to her. 

Eleine flung a barrier around her group, shimmering but hard as stone, as the mages exerted, some leaning back as power ripped from them, some pressing forward, forcing it out. 

Then the air seemed to crack between them, a terrible split slicing through the fabric of the world, and green exploded into an unbridled rift. 

It was bigger than any Eleine had found across Thedas, and she could not understand _why_ Clarel wanted to open a rift here – now. 

Until she saw eyes and holes and something terrible inside it. Fear, cold and slick, seeped into the world, and even Clarel seemed to back away from it. 

But the warden soldiers. They moved towards it, and it let out a shrieking, wailing cry. Hawke and Stroud yelled over the madness, begging, reasoning, but it was lost amongst the waves of noise. 

She was shouting her own words, she wasn’t sure what, but a few of the wardens had turned to look at her, fear and uncertainty cut across their faces. She stamped her staff down, _madness_ , and _tricked_ spilling from her lips. Clarel seemed to see her people wavering, and her booming voice joined the mix. And it was building and building and all too much and Erimond was moving, pulsing with impatience, to the edge of the platform.

“My master thought you might come here, Inquisitor,” he yelled, and Clarel’s voice was snuffed out as she watched him with surprise. Erimond began stamping his staff, and the noise seemed to pound through the air, echoing as though they were in an enclosed space. “He sent me this to welcome you,” he crowed, voice pitching with delight. 

If she had thought the demon inside the rifts shriek was bad, it was nothing compared to the one that came from the sky – one familiar and cold and gurgling. The fortress seemed to shake as gusts slammed down on them from above, a great crack and pop echoing with what she knew were dragon wing beats. 

Eleine was darting to the side in seconds, just as a corrupted flame, that seemed more crystalline than anything else, came torrenting down upon where she had stood. Her stomach was lost somewhere in her mouth, the smell of blistering Haven and a dying Sven lodged in her nose. She had forgotten she had erected a barrier earlier, but was glad she had when she saw her companions hadn’t moved in time to avoid the blast. Ash billowed up from around them, and Cassandra waved it away with her shield. 

The fortress shuddered, and Eleine heaved herself to her feet. Large stones came raining down from above as the dragon’s tail slammed the walls and towers and spires. They were tossed about, ducking and darting and stumbling into one another, her companions grasping hold of a few wardens and wrenching them out of the way of rocks and fire. 

That seemed enough to sway their allegiance.

Soon Eleine could not see anything through the dust and ash in the air, could not hear her companions, or even her own voice as she called to them. Her ears felt full of liquid that was sloshing and sloshing around.

Panic was a spear in her gut, wrenching and debilitating. She was blind, coughing, lurching. She had no target to lash out on, no path to follow to hide. She threw spears up, useless flings, hoping to hit the dragon. 

There was a crash, and she was thrown forward, catching herself on a stone wall and clinging like a wobbling halla fawn. The dragon let out a series of thundering roars, and Eleine clapped her eyes shut, trying to ride it out. It quietened, and she opened her eyes to find the dust and ash settling. Her eyes scoured through the cloud to see the archdemon’s form perched above them on a tower. Its huge wings were out and flexing, its snake-like neck swishing back and forth, searching for them. 

Rot and decay reeked from it, violating the air and shoving up her nose and into her mouth. Eleine felt like she was choking on it, and heaved. No hand clamped over her nose and mouth was enough to keep the hot, thick stench out. 

“Inquisitor,” Solas shouted from somewhere in the courtyard, but she didn’t dare call back lest the dragon find her. 

There was a flash of purple light to her left, and Eleine whipped her head around to see Clarel attack Erimond from behind. How had Eleine gotten over here? When had she climbed up stairs? 

“Clarel,” Erimond gasped, body twitching and convulsing. He stretched out a hand. “Wait.” 

Eleine felt inclined to say much the same thing as she watched Clarel raise her arm, fingers sparking with lightning. Eleine’s stomach hollowed out with horror as the stupid woman shot a chittering streak of lighting at the dragon, only to have it rear back, head snap around to their position and spring at them. 

Eleine ducked behind the railing she was clutching – what she had thought was a wall – and clenched her eyes closed around the scream of light as the dragon spat fire. 

She heard it swoop overhead, great wings pounding away into the air. There was a scuffling coming towards her, and Eleine opened her eyes to see Erimond scrambling through the ash away from a streak of fire on all fours, face smudged with ash and muck. 

He looked up, saw her, paled, and scrambled backwards instead. 

“Terror,” Varric shouted, and she twitched at the panic in his voice. The dragon screeched overhead, and there was a deep, sickening chuckle from the courtyard.

Eleine looked over Erimond to see Clarel separated from them by a line of smouldering fire. The flames made the hollow of her eyes almost black, and by the deep furrow of her brows, Eleine knew the woman was furious. 

_Too little too late,_ she wanted to spit at her. 

In the few moments between Erimond’s attempt at escape, and her manifesting a spear in her hands, she met Clarel’s dark gaze. 

_Mine_ , the woman seemed to be saying. _He’s mine._

Eleine whipped her arm forward, spear flinging through the air with ease, and burying into the wall next to Erimond’s head. He yelped and fell backwards, crawling towards Clarel instead. 

Eleine placed Clarel beneath her own searing look. _Then you will be mine_.

“Help the Inquisitor,” Clarel ordered, voice hard and keen as steel, before hunting after the fleeing Erimond. 

“Terror!” 

Eleine raced back down the stairs, dust and ash puffing up with each step, and threw herself in front of Varric. A shade’s claws bounced off it, and her mana shot out, tiny tendrils absorbing the force and feeding it back into her. Her starved mana pool soaked it in. 

Her hand snapped to her back to unholster her staff, only to be met with air. Gone. When had she lost it? 

The shade took another swipe, nails raking useless across the sheen of her barrier. Three was a wail from somewhere in the chaos, and cold dripped down Eleine’s spine. Was that Cassandra? 

Again there was a low chuckle, and bodies went flying past, smoking and burning. 

Eleine could hear Solas barking out panicked orders, and Varric sinking to the ground behind her. The fortress quaked as trebuchets hailed down stones and mages tore it apart with their magic. 

The dragon swooped overhead, drawing in a shuddering, unholy breath. 

_The skin on his left cheek was completely burned away, the muscles and fat melting around his exposed gums and teeth._

Eleine’s hand pulsed with heat, and she slapped her other against it, feeling a force build between them, like pushing same magnets together. Harder she squeezed, and it crackled and popped.

Crystal fire flooded down upon them, and screams were thrown up to the heavens. 

_His hair had been scorched away, and cuts and blisters littered his exposed, pale body._

Her mana compacted and grew, forcing her hands further and further apart. 

The dragon’s shadow cast over them again. 

_He had been bled dry. A used leather bag, hanging limp over bones and deflated organs._

Eleine grit her teeth, her core stretching and scraping. A little sun was growing between her hands, roiling and scorching. The shades in front of them recoiled from the heat, slinking back to other opponents. 

“Andraste’s mercy, Terror.” Varric, it seems, had caught sight of it. 

The dragon drew in another breath. 

_He was not breathing, and his heart was not pumping_. 

Eleine gave a feral grin. “Solas,” she called, “magnet above!”

“Hold on to one another,” the elf shouted, “wardens, withdraw. _Withdraw._ ” 

Eleine saw figures scrambling past, but her vision was being blocked out, lost to the size of the sun. 

A pulsing green ball popped into life above their heads, crackling with the fade. Demons were torn from the ground, screeching, boxes and debris knocking into them. Eleine felt her feet lift, even from this distance, but Varric’s hands circled her ankles and held her down. 

A single warden screamed and flailed as they were flung up with the pride demon. 

Eleine breathed in, the sun pressing against her face now, cool to the touch of her skin, but charring her collar and front. 

The ground shook as the dragon spewed another line of fire, swooping towards Eleine. 

_She had lost him._

She tossed the sun up, up. The world was light and ash and heat and her dark laugh scraping away all other sound. The sun was sucked to the pressing ball of demons and debris, and the dragon rammed into it. 

_Sven._

“Down!”

The world exploded. 

Her barrier liquified, rushing, rushing over the wardens and her companions, a veil, a blanket over them. Eleine was slammed into the ground, working, working to absorb the force. Her mana was filling up too fast, and she gave a cry as she shoved it out to strengthen the barrier. But while it may have protected them from the flames themselves, the heat, the searing, biting heat was unavoidable. Solas’ cool mana was tingling over hers, sliding over them, staving off the scorching heat. 

Stones cut into her face, dirt and muck sticking to her.

Her ears were ringing, pounding. She touched the skin there, and pulled her gloved fingers back, wet. 

She turned over onto her back, waves of wind puffing over her, jet black with ash. The dragon twisted and writhed above them, a great contorted beast. One, two, three pumps of its flaming wings, and it soared away. 

Eleine could feel her mouth opening in a furious scream, could feel the tear of it in her throat – but she could no longer hear a thing. Her fists beat the ground, her legs kicking. 

Failed. Even with everything she had— 

Varric’s strong hands were on her shoulders, lifting her up, pulling. His dirty face was marred by clean lines of tears, his hair charred and teeth bloody. His mouth was moving, but she saw the words rather than hear them. Tits, something. Seeker and Hawke. He pushed her, and she followed him as the stumbled, blind and deaf, through the ash. 

Cassandra came charging at them from the ash cloud, sword raised, in as terrible shape as Varric. Varric waved her down, and the woman skidded to a stop, giving Eleine a dark look. 

Eleine raised a rotten, acidic eyebrow at her. 

Cassandra’s mouth was snapping open and closed. Hurry. Fortress coming down. Something, something – and cold, clear, silence. 

The ash was blowing away and settling, and one by one they found the survivors. Four warden swordsmen, two rogues, Hawke, Stroud, and her companions. No mages, no demons. No dragon. 

Eleine jerked her arm out, waving them all over to hide beneath an unstable awning rather than stay in the centre of the courtyard like an exposed nerve. The more distance they put between themselves and the rift, the calmer they grew. 

Once covered, Cassandra beat at her ears as she tried to communicate with Solas, clawing and gesturing. The elf gave a sharp, grave nod of his head, and pulled out some healing potions, handing them to the wardens and checking each one over, tapping their temples as he finished. 

They turned to one another, crying, shaking and speaking words she couldn’t hear. 

Solas came for her next. Three drops of healing potion he allowed her, finding her otherwise rather unscathed, and tapped dirty fingers to her temple. 

Sound came crashing back through her. Her head reeled with it; the screams, the pounding, the far off shriek of the dragon. Eleine rubbed at her head, taking in greedy gasps of air. 

Failed. She had failed.

“We _must_ get to Clarel,” Stroud ground out from beneath his blood-soaked moustache. 

“Yes,” Hawke said, “let’s just go take a jolly little stroll past that dragon that doesn’t die even when punted with a fucking _sun_.” He leaned himself up against the stained stone wall, shaking with exhaustion. His eyes landed on her, and there was a glint of appreciation there. “You absolutely must teach that to me, by the way.” 

“What other choice do we have?” Stroud snapped, tugging on his chainmail that was spreading demon goo against his skin. 

“A hundred others,” Hawke bit back, “a thousand, a million—”

“We do _not_ have time for this,” Cassandra cut in.

“These wardens are no longer combat capable, Inquisitor.” Solas came to stand beside her, filling the gap in their little circle. He held out her staff to her, a shine of disapproval in his eyes. She took it, tension in her shoulders smoothing out a little, and murmured her thanks. 

Varric wobbled on her other side, and Eleine reached out and clasped his shoulder, leading him to lean on her side. Varric shot her a smile full of false-bravado, but sagged into her nonetheless. 

Were _they_ even combat capable?

Stroud turned on Hawke, the cut of his body tense and accusatory. “You would hide here—”

“Hide here?” Hawke snapped, “I haven’t hid a day in my life. I was merely suggesting that your nonsense plan of ‘let’s charge blindly ahead’ was nonsense.” 

“Then perhaps you would apply yourself to more use than complaining and develop your own one.”

“Right, you want to hear my plan? Let’s forget Clarel, and get the _maker damned_ hell out of here.” Eleine did not miss the way Hawke’s eyes kept flicking over to Varric.

“We cannot abandon these people!” 

“Did you not see that—”

“Enough, we do not have time for this.”

“No, we don’t, so let’s _go_.”

“I will not leave my people!”

Eleine looked over at Cassandra who opened her mouth to shout at them again, and shook her head. The Seeker shut her mouth, and pressed it into a thin line. 

“Let Hawke go, Stroud.” Eleine’s voice snaked over their gathering, full of poison and steel. The warden looked over at her, fingers bunched in Hawke’s robes, nostrils flaring in anger. “Put your staff down,” she said, eyes on Hawke’s clenched grip on his staff. 

Giving one another one last icy look, they did as she ordered. Hawke righted himself, and leaned back against the wall as though nothing had happened and he hadn’t just been angling his staff’s blade at his comrade’s groin. 

“We are pursuing Clarel,” Eleine told them, voice calm and smooth. Hawke’s face darkened, and she squeezed her fingers that remained on Varric’s shoulder, holding him tucked under her arm. “And retrieving Erimond. There is no other choice. There is only us.” 

Hawke looked as though he was chewing on something vile. She knew he did not want to abandon these people, did not want to stop fighting for them. But she also knew he cared more for Varric than anyone else here, and if it truly came down to choosing between them – it was an easy, easy choice. 

Eleine breathed in clear air, and breathed out mana. Shimmering, glistening, it coiled around them, before settling into a personal barrier for each of her companions. 

Hawke gave her a sharp nod, and she returned it. 

Eleine turned to the warden’s collapsed against the ground in a huddle behind them. “Head back to the gate. If you meet with any Inquisition soldiers, tell them I sent you. You will be protected as much as possible.” They gave her weak nods. “Good luck.” 

“Aye,” one responded, the eldest of the bunch, “and same to ye, Inquisitor.” 

She righted Varric, feeling Hawke’s eyes on them like a burn, and waited until Varric gave her a determined nod. She smiled, patting him on the shoulder. 

“Let’s go.” And so they went, breaking from their cover, limbs feeling stuffed and full of liquid. Good luck, indeed. Eleine took them across the empty courtyard, skirting around the damned rift, and hunting up the way she had seen Clarel run off.

Maker be damned, Erimond had headed up the stairs. _Up_. Up to where there would be no cover, but lots of dragon. Eleine’s head began to pound, her muscles clenching and aching, as they crested the stairs.

The fortress was rocking, trying to buck them off. Walls and floors concaved around them, falling into pits of stone and dead bodies. Her companions shouts of surprise became a constant grate, because if it wasn’t demons, it was that fucking dragon hunting them every step they took. 

Feral, savage, it threw itself at the battlement they ran along, jaw snapping open in blistering waves of fire. It seemed following orders and duty were no longer incentives, but rather a very personal vendetta. 

They could only duck behind what walls and railings remained, Eleine’s barrier combined with Solas’ to combat most of the damage. But as they passed in between an awning, the dragon shoved its head through, and there was no lee to crouch behind, nowhere to run but _back_.

Fire shot through the opening, reflecting off walls and blistering her face. Her arms came up to protect her, but she felt the skin bubble and burn. Her concentration was scrambling, her brain throbbing. She could not maintain a barrier at all times. They were vulnerable, prey. 

How was she to get them out of this? How was she to lead them through this? To return to Skyhold, to laugh and love in Skyhold?

What more could she do? 

Varric’s bolts careened past her, squelching into the beasts eye. It reared back, losing its hold on the wall, and went plummeting down. Eleine threw herself onward – they had only moments before it would be back up, they had to go. 

As they came upon the corner of the battlements they were scrambling along, it was to find Clarel amongst some of her warden’s, fighting off two shades and a terror demon. Eleine met her eyes, and gave the woman a sharp nod. 

“Clarel,” Stroud called to the woman, as she shot up more stairs and carried on after Erimond. 

“Focus,” Eleine barked, staff slipping through her gloved fingers as she wielded it at the nearest shade. It was impossible to tell whether it was her gloves that were slick, or the staff itself – though she suspected both. The dragon’s shadow passed over them, its wing beats tossing them about with winds. 

Her force was a small army in and of themselves, lagging and gasping, but killing with such alacrity it left the wardens goggling in their wake. They hurried up the stairs after Clarel, Hawke pulling up the rear with a flagging Varric. 

Eleine saw the tail of Clarel’s cloak slip between a stone archway, and she pushed, _pushed_ her limbs for a bit more speed, and followed. She did not have the air or energy to call to her companions as she would have liked. _Almost there_ , she wanted to tell them. 

_Soon_ , she wanted to promise. 

They burst through the archway and onto a broken stone bridge, the moon just visible beneath a swarm of dark clouds. Eleine sheathed her staff on her back, her fingers no longer able to hold it. 

Clarel strode after a fleeing Erimond, his spells casting uselessly against her barrier. They were shouting at one another, an exchange Eleine missed amidst the noise, but she understood that whatever words Erimond was saying were _not_ helping his cause. 

Clarel, it seems, was not a weak mage in any measure. She wielded her staff like a mace, jutting it out at Erimond and tossing him about like a limp doll. Eleine could not help the grin that slashed across her face at the sight of Erimond curled up, convulsing and hiding his head from Clarel. 

Then they were close enough to hear, to see the deep lines on Clarel’s face, the white scars, the age made worse by pain and regret. 

And the utter hatred in her cold eyes. “I will _never_ serve the blight,” she spat. 

“Too late,” Eleine snarled, staggering up to the other side of Erimond, and leaning on her staff. 

Clarel looked up at her then, face chipped in anger, and she kept looking at Eleine, even when the dragon slammed into the ground behind her, dust puffing up into a cloud around her body. Still she looked at Eleine as the dragon’s maw opened wide, its razor teeth gleaming in torchlight and distant fires, and crunched Clarel between its jaws. 

“No!” Stroud wailed, but in the time it took him to make the sound and for them to surge forward, the dragon was already leaping up into the air, Clarel’s bloodied legs dangling from its mouth. 

It soared around them, and crashed into the archway they had just passed through, blocking of their escape. Once, twice, it shook Clarel like a hound shaking a rat. And then it flung her to the stones at their feet, shredded, broken. 

Clarel wheezed. 

The dragon slunk down the side of the archway, spiked tail swishing behind it. Eleine stumbled back, eyes dancing about the space. The dragon filled up the entire bride, wings unfurling to cover any space of escape. Behind them was only a sheer drop and death. Forward was only a creature none of them had the ability to combat. Fear, cold and sharp, spiked through Eleine’s veins. 

The dragon’s tattered and smoking body shook with its unnatural growls as it prowled towards them, passing over Clarel’s body. It leaned back on its haunches, a spring coiling tight. Eleine’s barrier was flickering red across them, but it would not be enough. A spear hardened between her weak fingers, almost falling to the ground the instant it was made. She heard Varric’s bolts click into place, and Solas’ magic crystalize in the air. 

Then it leapt, claws reaching, mouth opening. But a streak of lightning cut into its soft underbelly, and blood sprayed across all of them as it writhed midair. Eleine threw herself forward as it came crashing down upon the ground she had just stood in, seeing several of her companions do the same in her periphery. There was a terrible crack, and the dragon was scrambling, great claws cutting gouges into the stone. But it fell from the bridge, screeching and wailing all the way. 

The world fractured beneath her feet. All her insides seemed to go slamming upwards, her stomach seeming to burst into her mouth, her heart leaping up behind it. 

Eleine was falling. 

She scrabbled, scrabbled for a hold on the stone, but it was coming down with her, and her gloves, slick with blood and muck and mud, slipped. 

_“No!”_

Sven would remain waiting for her return forever. He would never get the family he thought he had found in her. 

She was tossed around and around and around in the freefall. The landing above disappearing in a rushing distance, a cavern growing larger and larger beneath her. 

She would never be able to pay Dorian back for his easy, clucking care.

Eleine could not scream, could not even breathe, as wind and air buffeted her face and body. 

Never be able to hold Cullen again.

The bodies of her companions hurtled down with her. 

Never give him at least some of the care he had given her. 

She evened herself out, lungs screaming, needing a breath soon or— 

Her vision was eclipsing, her heart speeding up, too fast, too fast and she wrenched her arm out, desperation sizzling in her mana. 

Her mark cracked open, and if she could have screamed she would. Green splintered the approaching ground, reaching out. 

It snapped closed around them, arms wrenching tight, squeezing. 

She would never be able to trod anything but corruption across Thedas.


	31. Step Cullen, Step Dorian, Step Sven.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoy this lovelies, sorry for any mistakes. I haven't had as much time as I would have liked to check it over and I have a date tomorrow so I won't be able to do it then. Wish me luck! 
> 
> Lots of love, as always <3

Wet, murky sludge snatched at their boots, sucking them in. If they avoided the green waters where little larvae writhed and swarmed, they would either crunch over bone and skulls or sink into that terrible, grey mud. As they shuffled along, fear was a cold, oppressive hand, pushing down on them all.

Eleine’s head rattled, swam and felt light in a way that she knew was _wrong_. She was shaking, they were all shaking and they had to stop their bumbling trek every few minutes, to sit on some slick rock or rather and gasp. The air here was thick and hot and full of _something_. It seemed as physical, and tangible as the rest of the fade around them, pressing into their mouths and lungs. 

They sought the hints of structure amongst the crags, but they were led around and around in lost corridors of stone that housed wraiths and carcasses. Odd things creaked and wailed from the darkness, shadows licking out at them. Her companions grew so silent she may as well have been alone. Each step forward she took had a name and a promise. _Cullen. Dorian. Sven._ Step Cullen. Step Dorian. Step Sven. 

Seeing Divine Justinia and being reunited with her memories were no consolations, no balm, no boon. Once they knew the name of the foe the faced, whose domain they trod through, it snaked its way into her mind. 

Eleine did not know if her companions could hear the words it was speaking to her, or if they just knew _something_ was happening, as she paled and watched them in terror. When they asked what happened, Eleine just shook her head. She would not speak those words aloud, and give them more power as they fed off the rest of the group, as well. 

Mouth dry, a pulse beneath her eyes, Eleine carried them onward. What else could she do? 

But then she saw them. “What are those things?” Cassandra cried, but Eleine knew exactly what those things were. 

Eleine froze at the top of blood slicked stairs, unable to move, to breathe, to make a sound, as three of herself stepped from shadows, one crawling down from a stone wall. 

Varric was shouting at her, a hand on her arm, shaking her. But she was looking at herself, at the eyes of chipped bone staring back at her. Her father’s eyes, deep in her own sockets. 

One of herself took a blood soaked finger in her mouth, and sucked. Another swayed toward her, blood splattered over her chin, down her front, staining white pants. 

She knew whose blood that was. Somehow, though it was just blood, each drop seemed to have a face and a name. 

That was Sven’s blood. Cullen’s blood. The last of herself gave a low laugh, tongue lapping up blood dribbling from a finger. Dorian’s blood. 

Then they were all laughing, and hooting, and Eleine was chipping up inside. That was blood she had drawn from them. She knew. She knew. 

“Hurt them,” one of her spoke, a velvet purr. “It’s what you are.” 

“This is what you are,” another joined, smacking her blood covered lips. 

The last raised an idle, stained hand, and picked crusted blood from beneath the nails. “What you have always been.” 

Then they grinned together, and it was an expression she remembered having worn, years ago. “Don’t you remember?” 

“No,” she quaked. 

“Terror, listen to me,” Varric was biting. 

Their black hair, her hair, was matting, oiling down over their faces, as more blood bathed them. They moaned. 

Then Cassandra’s sword cut clean through the waist of one, and Eleine listened to herself shriek. Ice was splintering out the eyes of another, and three bolts cracked her into bits on the floor. 

The last remained, titling its head at her, expression smoothed out into a small smile. “Don’t you recognise yourself?” it breathed, before a fist of rock flung it over a crag, and it was gone. 

“Terror.” Varric shook her arm. “You alright?” He didn’t sound alright, himself. 

Eleine blinked, the world seeming to swim, as she looked around her. Solas was sagging against a wall, muck sticking onto his cheek and head. Hawke sat on the top step, staff shaking in his hands, eyes lost and unfocused in front of him. Stroud cursed and swung his sword at nothing at the bottom of the stairs, and Cassandra was trying to placate him through stilted speech. 

_No._ “Yes,” she forced out through numb lips. “Did you see?” 

Hawke seemed to shake himself, and his brown eyes peered up at them, haunted. “I saw… something.” 

“Those were manifestations of our fears,” Cassandra’s grim voice interrupted them. “Some of our worst fears.” 

“Andraste’s perky tits,” Varric rumbled, “let’s get out of here.” 

Eleine allowed his hand to lead her down the stairs, and they all pretended none of them were shaking. “The chantry lied,” Eleine mumbled. Her companions looked at her with confused, wary eyes. “Andraste’s tits were saggy.” Her voice had come out as no more than a whisper. Such a weak little sound. 

Varric snorted with forced, empty humour. “Saggy tits wouldn’t have suited your throne. Let them have this one, yeah?” 

As they continued on, Eleine knew the nightmare demon was speaking to her companions as well, though she could not hear it herself. Occasionally one of them would falter, skin paling, mouth pinching. Solas muttered to himself in elvhen, and Varric and Hawke cursed together – in colourful phrases Eleine thought Dorian would have loved. The thought was a pang in her chest. 

Stumbling into a graveyard, with all her companions names written on it was perturbing. The fade’s reflection of Corypheus’ plans, perhaps? 

“Unmarked graves?” Hawke muttered, lumbering through them, wiping sweat off his brow. 

Eleine blinked at him, and looked back at the tombstones. _Solas. Cassandra. Dorian._ She traced a finger in the grooves of Dorian’s lettering. “You can’t see it?” 

Hawke paused, and looked back at her, brow tugged tight with unease. “See what?” 

She felt all their eyes on her, and she looked over at Solas, but found him looking as concerned as the rest of them. “The engravings?” she quaked. 

Their faces settled into grim lines. “No,” Hawke said, “there’s nothing on them.” 

Eleine’s eyes flickered back down to the stone she was touching. _Dorian._ And beneath that, a scrawling word. _Temptation_. Her eyes shot to the stone beside it. _Varric_. Carved under it: _Becoming his parents_. 

Not Corypheus then. But Nightmare. 

“Inquisitor?” Cassandra hedged, as though trying not to spook a troubled animal. _Cassandra, Helplessness._

“What do you see?” Stroud demanded, shifting from foot to foot, irritated. 

_Cole, Despair_. Eleine moved her dry tongue about her mouth, wetting it with stale saliva. “Nothing.” 

They watched her for a few long moments, and she took a careful look at the last of the stones, before turning to leave. _Solas, Dying alone_. “Nothing.”

They were no longer running, nor even jogging. Instead they walked along, Varric under Hawke’s arm, Cassandra flagging at the back with Stroud. Solas jerked along beside Eleine, all of his usual elegance and energy gone. Still, no one said a word. 

Once Eleine collected the last of her memories – not that she had ever felt the need to regain them, she was not bereft without them – the spirit masquerading as Justinia revealed itself, and their hell tinged just that little bit more black. 

She was surrounded by herself. Those _other_ hers. Some crawled across the ground of the valley like deranged animals, others just watched, smirking from behind stone pillars. 

Cassandra and Hawke were off yelling somewhere around her, curses and grunts of disgust tossed up into the air.

Eleine’s vision punctured white. For a moment she swayed on the spot, feeling her knees buckle, and then Varric was calling her name, and she caught herself on her staff. 

She looked down to see one squatted in front of her, the eyes of her father glittering above a contorted grin. “What are you trying so hard to be?” it giggled, hands clawing at her legs. 

Eleine grunted, and tried to throw her off, but then there was another, pressing at her back, nails scraping over the sensitive skin beneath her skull. “What a pathetic little lie you live,” it breathed in her ear.

A blade coalesced in Eleine’s hand, and she twisted, wrenching her arm out, and hacked into the neck of the one in front of her. It gurgled, blood tumbling out from the plump lips, and Eleine raised the blade, crunching all the way through in the next swing. The head rolled across stone, mouth bloodied but smiling. Her muscles strained and shook. 

The one behind her grasped at her face, fingers dipping into her mouth and trying to push in her eyes. Eleine struggled, pointing the blade towards herself, and blindly jabbing at the creature that clung to her. 

The pearl sword came back out bloody. 

“Pretend,” it choked, “it does not matter.” Eleine turned to see it collapse, abdomen slashed open and leaking. “This is what you are.” Its entrails slipped out the split, and Eleine held a shaking hand over her mouth, trying to stop herself from being sick. 

She stumbled back around, turning in a circle, dazed. She watched her companions slaughter her. Limbs stuck up from between rocks, her hands waving at her. An organ bobbed past her in the shallow water she stood in. 

The dark, green splintered sky spun above her. Hands snatched at her, fingers seizing her arms, yanking, pulling, her own glistening teeth chomping onto her exposed neck. Eleine felt too hollow to be afraid, anymore. 

_He feeds on your fears,_ the spirit had said, and in a moment of lucidity, Eleine wondered how much of hers it had consumed for her to feel like a scooped out carcass. 

Her blade shortened into a dagger she twirled between her fingers, before stabbing it into the eyes of her attacker latched onto her neck. It let go, jerking back, hands fluttering around the blade protruding from its eye socket. It screamed. 

“Eleine,” one of them called to her, over the wails. 

“Eleine,” another joined in. 

“Eleine,” came two others. 

“Eleine,” they were soon all keening. 

Eleine clutched her head, spinning, spinning. _Eleine, Eleine, Eleine,_ pressed into her skull. “Shut up.” _Eleine, Eleine_. Something split, and cracked, inside her. _Eleine, Eleine, Eleine, Ele—._

_“Shut up!”_

Her fire exploded out of her, a cracking _boom_ shaking the ground and vibrating in the air alongside their taunts. Out her inferno burst, flaring up into the sky around her, writhing tendrils sweeping around the valley they were in. She listened to her own dying shrieks as flames ate away at their flesh – writhing maggots tearing into them and crusting their blood. 

Eleine slammed her hands over her ears, and screamed. Her knees cracked as she smashed into the ground, tucking her head in to her stomach, hair dipping into the murky water. Her voice tore out in one last, bleeding note, cresting the cacophony. 

Then there was silence and stillness and she cradled her head, whimpering. 

“Inquisitor,” Cassandra cried, and the water around Eleine sloshed and rippled as feet splashed towards her. There were hands on her shoulders, someone at her back bracing her, and Solas crouched in front of her, hands trying to uncurl her. 

Eleine released her hold of her ears to scrape away some tears that had escaped her eyes. Solas won their little struggle, pulling her back upright. Eleine took in greedy gasps of air, head thick and feeling as though it had been underwater for a long time. 

Green, stuttering mana swept over her, searching for injuries. 

“Terror,” Varric gruffed gently by her ear, and it was his strong arms that held her back. “What do you see when you look at them?” 

_Eleine Trevelyan. Losing herself_. 

“Myself,” her voice cracked.

“Ah,” Hawke winced beside her, “so when Cassandra cleaves one of those beasties in half…” 

“Yes.” 

“Maker’s wrinkled ball sac.” 

Eleine let out a jagged breath as Solas finished his inspections, sitting back on his heels. “Yeah.”

Eleine sunk into the water, body giving out. In her periphery, she could see her companions do the same. Despair washed over them in waves, cold and clammy; a worm chewing into their hearts. 

Maker, Eleine was so tired. Never, had she fought for this long. The mage uprising was second to it, but so free of the pure fear that this night had wrought. She trembled on the edge of tears, but blinked them back. There would be time to break later, and she would make sure it was in Cullen’s arms. 

By some unspoken agreement they got to their feet, helping each other up, and kept hobbling on. 

The closer they drew to Nightmare, the more demons they encountered. For the most part they stumbled upon them, none of them having much energy to look anywhere but the ground, and were drawn into quick, frightful skirmishes that ended in more than one of them injured. 

Eleine passed Hawke the last of her healing potions after a terror demon slashed him across the middle. They all watched the liquid disappear from the vial into his mouth with stiff jaws. 

Then they crawled up some stairs, and turned a corner, and came upon two pride demons, laughing in deep, resounding chuckles. 

They slunk back down the stairs, and Cassandra hissed beside her. Eleine looked at the faces of each of her companions, and found them all as pale, as pinched, as close to tears. Hawke dropped his staff at the bottom of the stairs, and pulled himself up against a wall, collapsing. Varric sat beside him, head in his hands, Bianca at his feet. 

Solas lowered himself onto the stair she sat on, and braced himself on his staff. Cassandra stood beside Stroud, however, eyes squinted up the stairs and face hard. “Inquisitor, mana?” Eleine’s lips pressed together, and she shook her head. “Solas?” Cassandra said, desperation making her voice shrill. Solas gave her a steady, sorrowful look, and shook his head as well. “Champion?” 

Hawke nestled further against the wall he leaned on. “‘Bout enough to tickle some demony toes.” 

Cassandra stomped her foot, and they all turned to look at her. Her lips drew back in a terrible snarl. “We _cannot_ stop here, we must keep going.” Eleine tried to keep her eyes open, but there was such a weight pressing down on them. _Cassandra, Helplessness._

“What would you suggest?” Stroud chewed out beneath his moustache. 

Eleine laid down against the stone stairs, the jabbing discomfort nothing but a shadow. She rubbed at her eyes. “I regain mana after absorbing the force against my barrier.” Stones bobbed along in the sky above her, swirling and knocking into one another. Eddies of green swam around them, wisping like clouds. 

_Dorian tucked her up against his side, arm around her, fingers lacing between her own. Her neck craned back, eyes stinging from the floating lights. “I will not be taken away from you,” Dorian breathed._

“Inquisitor,” Solas spoke in her ear, and Eleine forced her eyes open again. 

“We have no other choice but to move on,” Eleine breathed, lifting a lead hand to scratch at her cheek. Dried blood flaked off. 

“You might do some sucky sucky shit and get mana, but there’s no stealing energy,” Hawke countered. He had thrown an arm over his eyes, and looked like he was about to teeter over and slump asleep. 

“No,” Eleine agreed, moving her tongue around her stale, dry mouth. “But it means I can take most of the hits, while you do whatever you can to take them down.” 

“For how long?” Solas asked, leaning his forehead against his hands on his staff. 

Eleine gave a long sigh, and her eyes slipped shut again. “Not long.” _Not anymore._

“Varric, how many bolts do you have left?” Eleine heard Cassandra begin to pace in tight circles. 

“Nawr, been pickin’ ‘em up along the way. I’ve enough, Seeker.” 

_Cullen wet his lips again, and trembling, pulled his eyes away, to rove over the rest of her body. He took in the sight of her breasts, contained and leashed beneath their coverings, yet pushing, pushing to be freed. “Eleine,” he mumbled. “Maker’s breath.” He drank in the sight of her face, same as she drank in his. “You’re beautiful.”_

Fingers squeezed her arm, and Eleine laboured her eyes back open again. Solas hovered over her, his own eyes at half-mast, misty with exhaustion. She gave him a small nod, and he pulled away. 

Eleine struggled back up to a sitting position, and took in the spinning scene of Cassandra and Stroud arguing battle strategies. Minutes passed in which they made and discounted plans as they realised none of them had the energy to see any of them through. Eleine was almost certain Hawke was asleep now. 

_And in a few short steps, Sven was in her arms, the same as that day in the circle. Clinging, shaking. Same as that night in the infirmary when he had woken. “Missed you,” he mumbled into her chest, and she nodded against his head, finding his hair brushing his ears, now._

_She took a few thick stands in between her fingers. “It’s grown.” She pulled him closer to her chest, closing her eyes. “I’m always gone for too long.”_

_He gave a tight nod._

Eleine climbed out of the ravines of sleep. Solas had dozed off beside her, crumpled over, his staff slipping from lax fingers. Cassandra had her back to Eleine, and was engaging in a rather spiteful conversation with Stroud, while Varric watched them, wary. Hawke was most definitely snoring. 

Eleine turned around, and slipped back up the stairs. The pride demons thumped around, great bodies making the stone beneath her vibrate and rumble. Eleine breathed in, shaky, shallow, and breathed back out. “Though darkness closes.” She gripped her staff tight in aching fingers. “I am shielded by flame.”

On all fours she scrabbled across the ground towards them, ducking behind large, jagged rocks. Her eyes flickered around the strange place they were in. Tucked up in some sort of earthen bowl, there was only one way forward, through the demons and the green, writhing barrier. 

There were more demons than they had seen before. Two prides, several despairs hovering behind her, and a handful of shades and wraiths. Eleine slumped to the ground, regretting everything. As she cowered between two rocks, she was reminded of when she had buried Haven, and was left alone, injured and dying, to deal with a cave full of demons. 

Her mark throbbed, and she cocked her head at it, blinking bleary eyes at the spill of green from beneath her gloves. She wiggled her fingers, and cast her mind back to that moment. How had she escaped, again? Something about the mark. 

She felt the skin on her palm split beneath the mark, and her voice hitched in a scream. As she stumbled out from the rocks, the demons heads snapped to look at her, and she heard the clamour of her companions running up the stairs. Despair shrieked, pride chuckled, lightning coalescing in its hands, and a shade reared across the stone to her. 

Just as her companions burst from the stairs into the bowl, Eleine’s hand was vibrating, pulsing, and she thrust it upwards. It ripped open, jade bursting into the sky, and the demons shrieked as they were torn towards it. The mark was tugging and tugging and folding in on itself. 

An implosion, she remembered now. There was a terrible grating noise, as though a door was being forced open somewhere, and pride was no longer chuckling, but roaring. Then the mark slammed shut, and Eleine caught herself on the rock. Solas came to skidding halt beside her, Cassandra ramming her shield into a shade by their right. 

“One Pride gone,” Hawke shouted at them from somewhere else, “two wraiths, one pride and despair remaining.” 

“We’ve got the despair and wraiths,” Varric yelled, and Eleine gave Solas a nod, and together, along with Cassandra, they moved over to handle the pride demon. 

The many large rocks were their safe harbours, and they ducked and weaved behind them as pride’s lightning whips arced for their poor fleshy bodies. As they struggled to get closer, catching only glimpses of the creature, Eleine noticed it was flagging, weakened by whatever the mark had done to them. 

Thank the Maker. 

Eleine scraped the dribbling stream of her mana, forcing it outside herself and into a barrier around them all. It burned through her channels as it went, fighting and clawing to get back inside. Eleine hissed as she forced more into her palm, a white spear hardening beneath her fingers.

The pride demon stood guard in front of the barrier, growling and stomping its foot, turning to look for them. Eleine ducked back behind the lee of the boulder, and nodded to her companions. 

They burst out, and pride jerked, snarling, and drew its arm back to swing the whip. Solas stamped his staff down beside her, face in a grimace, and gravity pulled down on the demon’s arm. Cassandra charged towards it, blade whipping out and cutting into the back of its knee before it could kick her. 

Pride gave a weak chuckle as it slammed to one knee, gravity giving out above its arm. Eleine spun, and heaved the spear out. Just as pride raised its whip bearing arm to strike, her spear buried into its eye. The weapon splintered into grey spikes, bursting from its head, and pride fell with a rumbling thud. They each let out a strangled noise of relief. 

Cassandra staggered up to her, dropping her sword and shield, and clasped her hands on Eleine’s shoulders. Eleine swayed under the woman’s weight, clinging onto an equally unstable Solas. 

“What were you thinking, Inquisitor?” Cassandra bit, heaving in gasps of air, head hanging between her arms. 

Eleine held onto the woman’s underarms, and Solas did the same for her. “Sit in the middle,” Eleine gasped, “take some hits till I had enough mana to do something.” 

“Terrible plan,” Cassandra spat, and looked up as Varric, Stroud and Hawke clanked up to them. 

Eleine nodded at them, and looked them over for any noticeable injuries. “They were all terrible plans.” Eleine groaned as Hawke lifted Cassandra up and over his shoulders, releasing her. “There were no good plans.” 

Hawke watched her with those dark brown eyes of his. “The ones closest to the technique suffered the most. Do you think you can do it again?” Eleine considered, winced, then nodded. “Good. Next time we will corral them towards you, and hopefully suck up more.” 

“Yes,” Cassandra hissed, accepting her sword and shield back from Stroud, “teamwork.” 

Eleine did not have the energy to roll her eyes, though she wished she did. The shock, at least, had slapped all thoughts of sleep from them. As they carried on, stopping at every new turn for a rest, they allowed room for just a tingle of hope in their hearts. Even when faced with another barrier, guarded by a swarm of demons, they did not let that little light go out. 

Eleine thrust herself into the centre of the cesspool, barrier leeching out the force that was belted at her. Pride’s lighting whip slammed down on top of her, rebounding, and making Eleine’s eyes gritty with ash and smoke. Green wraiths pressed against the shimmering red veil that covered her, faceless heads watching her. Shade claws joined the madness, scraping down her barrier, hunched backs obscuring all else in sight. Ice splintered across her vision and despair’s ratted body shot past. 

“Now, Inquisitor,” Hawke thundered over the uproar, “now!” 

Eleine’s mark sundered open, and she sunk to the ground as she was made deaf by the unholy cries of demons. The magic in her palm curled inward, pressing, pressing, then boomed closed. 

Cassandra scooped her hand underneath Eleine’s arm, and hauled her back to her feet. “Mana?” the woman asked. Eleine gave her a crooked, slashing smile. Tension eased in the Seeker’s brows, and her lips thinned out in an almost smile. “Solas, Hawke.” Eleine turned to see the rest of her companions join her, eyes watery with relief and hope. “Use the last of the lyrium,” Cassandra ordered, “Nightmare is just up ahead.” 

“Yes,” Hawke agreed,” I can feel the bastard. This will not be easy.” 

As they edged out of a murky cave and came upon the crackling rift, _not easy_ seemed too soft a description.

“Maker’s balls,” Varric whispered, “ _no_.” 

A great, ivory spider leg slammed down into the ground before them, cracks and fissures chipping into the stone. Eleine looked up, and then up even more, to take in the monstrosity before them. It was a spider – if a spider was a contorted, bone creature with pulpous, spinning eyes in every crevice. 

It opened huge snapping jaws, and chittered at them, spitting out an acidic, foul substance. It was as large, if not larger, than Adamant itself. 

What hope they had, spluttered and went black. 

Before it screeched a smaller aspect of itself, no less gruesome or twisted. The beast behind it made it look small, despite it being twice as thick and twice as long as herself. 

Eleine swallowed, and held back the sob wrenching at her chest. 

“If you would,” the spirit beside them said, “please tell Leliana ‘I am sorry’.” Eleine jerked herself back, covering her eyes as light gleamed off the spirit, as bright and hot as a sun. “’I failed you too’.” 

Eleine dug the palms of her hands into her eyes, trying to keep out the searing light. Something crackled like lightning, then there was a resounding screech, and Eleine was almost thrown back at the sheer force of the sound. When the noise subsided, and she was able to crack an eye open, it was to find the spider and spirit gone, lost over the edge of the cliff. 

The nightmare aspect gave a gurgling screech, and rose up into the air, above a dais. 

“Eat my hairy ass,” Hawke bellowed to her right, before charging in, staff sparkling blue. That was all the initiation any of them needed. 

If it were not for the jade rift behind the creature, she was sure her blows would have been blunt with exhaustion. But it was almost as though she could hear Cullen’s voice beyond the green, could see Dorian’s smile beneath his moustache and Sven’s hopeful, worried eyes. 

Her mind skittered in its focus as she stood underneath the nightmare aspect. Her vision kept dissolving into red waves and obsidian thrones, before snapping back to the pale, clammy demon. Blade flickering red with her fire, Eleine jabbed it into the creatures middle, holding it still as it writhed, just long enough for Cassandra to duck behind it, slamming her shield into its back. 

Solas’ cold magic kept the scuttling minor fears away, and Varric and Hawke’s attacks prevented the terror demons from getting too close to Eleine, Cassandra and Stroud as they hammered the nightmare. 

It kept flickering out of corporeal existence, however, and they were left stumbling forward, blows falling through empty air. 

_Cullen, Sven, Dorian_. 

Finally the beast gave a chilling shriek, jerked mid-air as ice impaled its abdomen, and disintegrated. 

“Yes,” Hawke cried, and they threw themselves forward. 

Not fast enough, not fast enough. 

Cassandra leaped through the rift, Solas behind her. And then Varric, and Eleine was reaching out, fingers splayed. 

The spider slammed down before them, rearing back, and obscuring the rift. Hawke jerked her out of the way of a bone leg, and they scuttled back from it. 

Stroud to her left, Hawke to her right, they heaved and shook. “We need to clear a path,” Stroud growled, hand clenching around his sword. 

Hawke grabbed her arm, and she wrenched over to look at him, heart a heavy pulse in her stomach. “Go,” he urged her, eyes dark with finality, “I’ll cover you.” 

She opened her mouth to argue, but it was Stroud who got there first. “No,” he said, “you were right. The wardens caused this. A warden must—”

“Help them rebuild,” Hawke cut in, already angling his body as though to charge the waiting demon, “that’s _your_ job.” He took a step forward, staff outstretched towards nightmare. “Corypheus is mine.”

But Eleine was thinking of Varric, beyond the rift, waiting, standing by, eyes scouring the green for his friend. She bit down hard on her bottom lip, bile stinging the back of her throat. She did not know if Stroud had family, but she was sorry if he did. 

“Stroud.” It was selfish. A decision not made for her people, for the world or for the betterment of the wardens. She made it for Varric. 

To spare him pain. 

Stroud gave her a jagged bow, and his face was smooth in acceptance. “It has been an honour, Inquisitor.” Eleine gave him a nod of respect, of apology, of guilt. It was not enough. 

And then she was running, dragging a screaming, unwilling Hawke behind her. Stroud was grunting behind them, lost forever. 

“For the Wardens!” she heard, before she jerked Hawke in front of her, and leapt into the rift.


	32. Special

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait! I hope you are all well and happy. 
> 
> Lots of love, as always xx

The world crackled green around her, pressing and grasping and squeezing. Her lungs felt as though they were being clenched between prides fists as they stuttered and shuddered. And then she was shoved out of the embrace of green and the world swung into noise and confusion. 

Eleine stumbled, wrenching in a gasp of air, head feeling as though it was too heavy for her neck. Her right knee buckled, and she went staggering forward. She caught herself on her staff just before her knees crashed to the ground, and dragged herself back upright. Blinking her eyes against the onslaught of vision, she saw the courtyard was swarmed by Inquisition soldiers, demons and wardens in a feverish battle. 

Varric hugged a slumped Hawke up off the ground to her right, and the shortest glance could show her they were both shaking and crying. Her other companions had thrown themselves into the fray of the ongoing battle, looking like they had scrabbled out of a burial pit. 

Eleine could not turn around to look at the rift behind her, could not let herself wonder if just a little more time would be enough for Stroud. Instead, she let her arm outstretch, her face contorting in pain and remorse, and wrenching her fist closed. Gaunt, shocked faces turned to gape at her as demons screeched and flailed, twisted bodies tearing towards the rift. 

Eleine closed her eyes through the agony of the throbbing mark and the wave of oncoming demons. She left them closed, until the crackle of the rift boomed, and was snuffed out. Then she opened her eyes to see the only green left around them was the tattered and stained uniforms of her people. 

A warden to her left fell to his knees. “Thank the Maker,” he cried. And then the whole of the courtyard burst, wardens and Inquisition soldiers alike thumping swords to shields, and crying out in relief. 

The sound washed over the whole of the fortress, and rather than the threnody of death and fury, the noise was a swelling tenor of hope and deliverance. 

“She was right,” Eleine heard Hawke hiss to her right, “without the nightmare to control them the mages are free.” Eleine frowned, and followed Hawke’s eyes. True to his words, a few delirious warden mages stumbled around, blinking and shaking their heads as though they had just woken from a year-long sleep. 

“Corypheus loses his demon army,” Hawke growled, triumph poison in his voice. “Though,” his tone sharpened, “as far as they’re all concerned, the Inquisitor broke the spell with the blessing of the Maker.” Eleine’s eyes snapped back to his, and found his expression a mixture of dark glee and trepidation. Her stomach hollowed out in horror, and she shook her head in denial. Varric watched her with wary eyes, sitting on the ground beside Hawke, and Solas came to join them, brows scrunched above grey, calculating eyes. 

As she darted her eyes around the courtyard, and found shinning faces, mouths open with reverence, she felt that denial crust up, and blow away. “They must be told the truth,” she breathed. 

“Must they?” Hawke sighed, re-situating himself against Varric. “That sounds rather like snatching treats from a child to me.” Eleine’s lips thinned out, and she made to snarl a reply, but a hooded messenger ran up to her, face wet with sweat and streaked with gore. 

“Inquisitor,” he puffed, a bead of sweat dripping off his nose, “the archdemon flew off as soon as you disappeared.” Eleine stiffened, her face keening out into dangerous lines. The messenger seemed to know what she was thinking and hurried on. “The Venatori magister is unconscious but alive. Cullen thought you might wish to deal with him yourself.” 

Eleine’s heart stuttered in violent relief, and lurched at Cullen’s name. She felt the tight clamp around her chest ease at the knowledge that somewhere, her love was safe. 

The messengers eyes slid off to the side. “As for the wardens,” he said, tone turning icy, “those who weren’t _corrupted_ helped us fight the demons.” 

A warden walked up to her, jerky and stiff. He clapped an awkward arm against his chest in fearful respect. Eleine saw the messenger’s face go even colder at the sight of the man. “We stand ready to help make up for Clarel’s… tragic mistake,” the warden broke, and Eleine felt a flash of hot fury through her at the name. And then his next few words snuffed it out. “Where is Stroud?” 

So many eyes on her. Beseeching, hopeful. Cold dread seemed to wash over the wardens in the courtyard. They could tell from her expression, she knew. Eleine cast her eyes to the sky, finding it lightening with fingers of morning sun. 

“He died,” she forced out, trying to expunge the tremor of exhaustion in her voice, “striking a blow…” what would they like to hear? “Against a servant of the blight.” 

There was a sob from somewhere, and as she looked back down, it was to see the wardens hanging their heads, shoulders driving to the ground in despair. 

“Inquisitor,” the warden before her breathed, “we have no one left of any significant rank.” His voice cracked, and wobbled. “What do we do now?” The tension in the courtyard seemed to be a knife balanced on its tip, and she was going to be responsible for its clatter on the floor. 

_You’re mine now_ , she wanted to growl. “You will stay,” she spat, “and do whatever you can to help.” The warden watched her from his helmet with wide, unsure eyes. “Stroud died believing the wardens were a force for good.” And how did they all repay him? “You have one final chance to prove it.” There was not one person in the courtyard that did not hear the threat that rang in the air with her every word. She would destroy every last one of them, if they dipped back into the same madness again. 

Despite her body being heavy with strain and weak with emotional collapse, she also knew there was not a person here who doubted she could do it, either. 

“Despite your vulnerabilities,” Eleine finished with a sneer, “there are demons to be killed.” 

“Thank you, your worship,” the warden mumbled, the stiffness in his stance dripping, “we will not fail you.” There was neither relief nor hope in his words. Only resignation. 

And then the world seemed to spin, and Eleine was stumbling down a dais she had not realised she had been standing on. And Cassandra was at her side, the woman seeming to teeter as much as herself, yet was trying to stabilise her. Eleine gave a small, tired smile. 

The courtyard swarmed with people, but by some unspoken decision, they skirted Eleine’s little group, and for a few long moments, they had a peace. It was not filled with crushing relief, or sweeping respite. Instead they mulled in their thoughts, eyes averted from one another, reeling from all that had occurred. There was grief there, too. It was… odd. Perhaps it would have been different, if Stroud had fallen beside them in battle. Rather than… Than her having left him behind. Abandoning him to that place. 

Each of them had shared a single desire, in there. To escape, to set foot on this ground again. It had strained in the air around them. They had each tasted each other’s hopes and fears. How long had they been there for? Stumbling, protecting, helping, struggling with one another? He was the only one not to be returned, to be denied this. They all felt it, Eleine knew. 

She looked around at them. Solas, in a way so strange for him, was sat on the blood and ash swathed ground, staff forgotten beside him. His head was hanging low, hands open before him. She could see the blisters and cuts on his palms from wielding his staff. 

Varric was slumped against Hawke, eyes blinking up at the sky like he did not know where he was. Bianca was clutched to his chest, looking somewhat singed and battered. Cassandra held her arm, grip tight and full of _something_. Perhaps a need for compassion. Perhaps hope. Eleine could not see the woman’s expression, as the Seeker had turned her face away from her, angling her chin down to her chest. 

What was she to say? Good job? Though she could hear her people rallying around them, rejoicing in a battle won, there was none of that in the air between them. The triumph tasted like rot on Eleine’s tongue. 

Then a healer, a dark-haired human in his late forties, bustled up between them, and plucked up Solas’ hands without a word or ceremony. The elf looked up at him, shocked at the sudden intrusion of space, and they each turned to watch as his hands were smeared with a poultice. 

“Any other substantial injuries?” The healer gruffed, wiping off his own wrinkled hands. Solas gave a slow, jerky shake of his head, eyes still wide in surprise. “Right,” the healer grunted, getting back up to his feet. “Which of you needs tending to first, then?” 

Eleine raised a hand to point to Varric, but Cassandra jerked her forward by the arm. “The Inquisitor should be your first concern,” the woman reproached. 

A flash of irritation went through the healer’s grey eyes, and Eleine could not help but like him. “My first concern are those most in need.” Then his eyes set upon her face, and he gave a startled jerk. “Ah. Right then.” 

Eleine blinked, then pressed her lips together. She must look the worst of them all, she realised. How many times had she run ahead of them into the dragon’s blaze?

With one last look at her companions, she allowed herself to be led away into an alcove by the healer. After the second time her feet stumbled over a stone, the healer placed a gruff hand under her arm, and dragged her. Eleine was set upon a barrel, tucked up out of sight of the Inquisition and wardens. 

The moment she was sitting, her whole body seemed to sag, and tremors wracked through her. Though the healer was grabbing her face and tilting it left and right, it felt like the lightest of touches. Her vision was eclipsing to a point. 

Eleine forced out a steadying breath. Just a little longer. Just a little longer. Her head lolled to the side at one point, and her half-open eyes watching people move about. The joy they had had previous, seemed to have leaked from them as they had begun gathering bodies. 

Tears stung at her eyes. Just a little longer. 

There was a flash of red, and her heart hammered against her chest. Cullen’s golden hair was wind-torn, wild and free. His amber eyes seemed so bright, in the morning dim, and they caught the warmth of torches around the courtyard. 

Eleine watched him stand atop some stairs, above the masses below, body straight and sharp and honed. His head turned left to right, eyes scouring the faces below him. Then he looked up, and found her. His mouth opened, and Eleine pretended as though she could see that scar on his top lips shine. Whether it was shock or surprise or relief that made his face sharp, she did not know. 

But as he hurried down the steps and broke into the crowd, she could only watch and admire the way it parted around him. Maker, he had such a presence. 

He was striding over to her, his gait snappy and sharp. Relief torrented through her veins, and she tried to pull away from the healer’s inspecting hands, only to have them clamp on her arms and shove her back down. She struggled, and the healer let out a stream of “Inquisitor, please” but then Cullen was there, left hand pushing the healer aside, right hand reaching for her. 

He pulled her to her feet like she weighed nothing, hands clenching around her arms to the point of pain. His touch seared down to her bones. 

“Cullen.” Her heart lurched, air being ripped from her lungs and throat. She tried to press forward, into his embrace, but he held her back, at arm’s length, eyes scolding up and down her body. They flickered with emotion as they took in the burns over her arms and face, the cuts and scrapes and dirt and blood. The tension in his brow eased when the healer prattled to him her injuries and that she was _fine, Commander, just let me heal her._

But he didn’t let her go. 

Warmth embraced her, and she was in his arms, tucked up safe in their own pocket of the world. “Maker, Eleine,” he broke, and the crack of his voice held exhaustion, fear and despair. Her lip wobbled, throat pulling tight. 

She collapsed onto him, spent and shaking. She felt his arms strain as he held her, and knew he was just as tired. His gasping, heaving breaths were right beside her ear, and though they were not sobs, she knew they were close. “Thank the Maker,” he was babbling, “thank the Maker you are safe. I thought… I hear you had fallen and I. Maker. _Maker_.” 

Eleine tried not to cry. She clenched her eyes shut, and shoved her head into his furred chest. As one of Cullen’s arms wrapped around her rib cage, the other bracing the back of her head, Eleine still did not cry. Cullen’s fingers tangled into her hair, tugging the strands out of her already loose ponytail. Her hands fisted in the fur of his mantle and she clung to him as though she would fall through the floor. Their faces pressed together, foreheads and cheeks, noses brushing and tracing. She breathed in his scent and heard him do the same to her. 

“Eleine,” he breathed, and it was tinged with reverence and hope and prayer.

A tear slipped from the cage of her eyes. Cullen felt it with his nose, and his arms tightened around her, clenching her to his front. He kissed her eye, and she could hear words in the firm press of his lips. _I’m here. You made it. We’re safe_. 

The healer huffed. “Fine. You want to cuddle, I’ll go attend to someone else and she can bleed.” 

Cullen’s hand snapped out, and by the strangled noise the healer made, she knew he had caught the collar of his robe. The healer yelped as he was yanked back beside them. 

Only then did Cullen release some of the strength of his hold, but seemed to shake at the concession. Cullen’s eyes found hers. Her heart had time to constrict and stutter at the heated, longing filled look, before he stooped down and gave her a bruising, desperate kiss. Eleine kissed back with every tired nerve and need within her. 

Then Cullen jerked, and wrenched his arms back to his sides. He gave her one last vulnerable look, before he strode off. 

The healer watched him leave, mouth open and aghast, but Eleine could only collapse back onto the barrel, and press her fingertips to numb lips. 

Cold snaked over her, the absence of his arms and hands leaving her feel exposed and raw.

Just a little bit longer. 

 

She supposed she must have slept. There was nothing but black in her memory from the point of her reunion with Cullen, and her opening her eyes now to see the wan colour of a tent canvas. By the pound of boots and straining calls just outside, she gathered they were still very much at Adamant. 

Eleine groaned as she sat up, muscles screaming at every movement. She buried her head in her hands and took in deep breaths through her nose. She tried not to think of Stroud and how he may have died. Or worse, how he may not have died. How he may have been able to be saved. 

She pressed her palms into her eyes and clenched her teeth. Her head felt thick and full her eyes gritty and face swollen. She thought she could sleep for a whole year and it would not be enough. The little snatch of rest was more a torment than anything rejuvenating. 

After a few moments that did not bring her any solace, Eleine crawled to the tent entrance, and held a flap back to peer out. 

Her eyes traced the beams of light cutting through grey clouds. Still morning. Inquisition boots tramped past, the occasional soft leather of spies and mages flickering by. 

She dragged in a readying breath, before pushing up onto one knee, and out the tent. Faces turned to gawk at her, as she stood up. Worse than before, so much worse. And even more undeserved than it had been before. 

“Ah, and so she rises from the mighty nap she took,” a voice called to her, all snide and false humour. “What other miracles will the great Inquisitor perform next?”

Eleine sighed, casting her eyes to her right to find Hawke leaning on his staff like a suave-not-at-all-exhausted man. “I see it was too much to hope that you had left.” 

Hawke’s smile turned a little more genuine. “Absolutely. I could not possibly leave until I get the chance to express my keen admiration and fancy for your illustrious self.” 

“Too many words,” Eleine shot back, “not enough substance.” 

Hawke tilted his head back and barked out a laugh. “I think I will not ask whether you are referring to myself or what I said.” 

“Hmm,” Eleine hummed, turning to face him fully, “so the tales are true. You do have some sense in you.” 

Hawke gave a wink. “I’m not all good sense and fantastic lines. Do give me the chance to prove my other…” his gaze raked down her rumpled form, “ _talents_ to you.” Eleine almost rolled her eyes. 

“And how will Broody take this, I wonder?” Varric gruffed at Hawke as he ambled past. 

“Oh,” Hawke shot at Varric’s retreating back, “he doesn’t mind an extra body in the sheets, _trust me_.” Varric just gave a snort, before disappearing off elsewhere. Hawke turned back to her, sultry smile slipping onto his lips. “Do not keep me in suspense, my imperious Inquisitor. Will you be joining myself and my dear handsome elf?”

Eleine looked him up and down. He was handsome, she supposed. But it was a cold realisation. 

He was nothing to the veritable sun that was Cullen. 

“I’m afraid,” she drawled, “all such pleasures I could offer are reserved for a far more deserving individual.” 

Hawke’s mouth kicked up into a delighted smile. “Oh? Perhaps they would _also_ like to join?” 

Eleine did roll her eyes now. “I doubt he would. Besides,” she tapped a finger to her heart, “he’s all _mine_.” 

“He must be quite someone,” Hawke huffed, “to have both your attention and your devotion.” 

Eleine wanted to shuffle at the word ‘devotion’, but it was not as though it wasn’t true. “He is. He’s…” how was she to describe his goodness, his warmth, his heart, his strength? His astoundingly riveting body? “Special,” she struggled. 

“Special?” Hawke laughed, seeming to enjoy his little game, “handsome special? Good special? Could cut you three ways in a moment special?” 

Eleine cocked her head and smiled. “All of them.” 

Hawke rolled his eyes. “Ah. I see. My offer was terribly misguided and so were the tales of my sense.” 

Eleine gave a serious nod of her head. “He has no equal, I’m afraid.” 

Hawke huffed. “Now you’re just being cruel.” 

Eleine shook her head, and turned around to leave, only to find a shuffling, blushing Cullen behind her. “Cullen,” she said, surprised. 

His amber eyes bored into hers with a heat that made her knees weak and mouth dry. 

Hawke whined behind her. “ _That_ is your special man? Are you absolutely sure neither of you are interested?” 

Cullen flustered, hand coming up to rub the back of his head, broad shoulders bumbling. Eleine’s lips curled in a smile. “Get out of here, Hawke. He’s mine.” 

Hawke whistled, but she heard him patter away, calling out for his “little hairy friend Varric”. 

“I… um.” Cullen’s eyes darted about. “Did not mean to interrupt.” 

Eleine gave a breathy laugh. “What can I do for you, Cullen?” His ears reddened further, and she could not stop her smile turning sharp. “Naughty man,” she breathed, too low for anyone but him to hear, “you just love to entice a woman, don’t you?” 

“Ah.” He swallowed, then shot a glance at her from the corner of his eye. Her heart leapt at the mischief that glittered there. “Only a certain kind of woman.” 

Eleine’s brows rode up, and she cocked her head to the side. “Oh?” Eleine took a few steps towards him, till they were at arm’s distance apart. She tilted her head back to look up at him. “And what kind of woman would that be?” 

Cullen gave that slanting smile of his, while his eyes dripped down from her own orbs, to her lips. “The special kind.” Hear heart beat against her rib cage, and she felt it pulse in her throat. Her cheeks warmed with her next smile as Cullen raised a hand, and grazed it down her cheek. Eleine felt the skin tingle in the wake of his touch. Then Cullen’s smile slipped a bit. “We must return to Leliana and Josephine’s camp. They will want a full report on what happened here.” 

Eleine sighed, trying not to stare at the hand that had returned to his side. “Yes, of course. I will be down in moments.”

Cullen nodded. “Some of the army has mobilised to march when you are ready. Those that remain will ensure there are no lingering… problems.” 

Eleine gave another nod. “Understood. I will meet you in a few minutes.” She tried not to sigh again as she walked to say her goodbyes. At least she would be able to doze on her mount. Though, as the image of Stroud’s bow flickered across her eyes, she wondered if she would manage sleep at all. 

 

She was right in her worries, of course. Even from the first few metres she put between herself and the fortress, she felt her stomach knot. She felt as though she was leaving Stroud behind, again. It was… odd, how much this was hounding her. 

It was not as though she had known the man much, or cared for him in any particular way. But in some ways she felt responsible for his death, and not in the way she was _used_ to either. 

Killing someone was one thing. Leaving someone to be killed, another burden entirely. 

_‘Come with us, ya tit.’ Harper stood atop smashed glass and blood, their phylacteries finally destroyed._

_Eleine cocked her head to the side, and gave a cruel smile. ‘Why?’_

_Harper’s face flashed with anger. ‘Why? Fuck you, little ‘Leiney. Who else do you fuckin’ have?’_

_Eleine was already turning on her heel. ‘I don’t need you.’_

Leaving Harper and Sarlaros and Landen… had been different. She had not known whether they would survive the revolt or not, but she had believed them capable. It wasn’t so much the abonnement… or had it been? 

Eleine frowned. When she had heard from Harper, a message that the woman had stolen large amounts of lyrium from the tower and would supply her if she needed, there had been some relief. But not a release of guilt that she so craved now. 

Eleine pressed her palms into her eyes again. Maker, she needed a distraction. 

She wrapped her fingers around the reins again, and sought out Cullen amongst the small group that made for camp. 

It was painful the amount of times her tired eyes would flick back and forth between the road through the sand and Cullen. If she were less surrounded than she was, she would stare as much as she liked at his fine form. As it was, the gaping faces turning up to watch her were many, and enjoying Cullen’s broad shoulders and narrow waist was too conspicuous. 

Though. Eleine tilted her head, tongue darting out to wet her lips. When else would she get such a good opportunity to admire his blonde curls being ruffled in the wind, his arms flexing in their hold on the reins, his muscled thighs clenching the—

Eleine’s eyes narrowed. Cullen shuffled again on the saddle, pulling his right hand up to his chest, then moving it back to the rein to grasp it – only to jerk it back to him a moment later. 

A spike of fear and anger jolted through her stomach, and she yanked her own reins towards him. Had he been injured and not been seen to? Was this another one of his ridiculous efforts of punishing himself? 

The closer she drew to him, the Inquisition soldiers parting around her horse like she was a rock in a stream, she realised that this was perhaps not the case. He seemed to be flexing his fingers, pulling and twisting them as though they were strained. 

Ah. His sword hand, of course. 

Eleine knocked her heels into her mount’s side, and it huffed, bouncing up into a trot. She drew up by Cullen’s right, and he looked over at her in surprise as she plucked his hand back off the reins. 

“Eleine?” 

“Hm.” She tugged off his glove, the many eyes on them itching against her skin. Foot soldiers and mages around them all turned to watch. 

“Eleine?” he asked again, but did not retract his hand, instead curving it around hers. Eleine smiled. 

She pressed her thumbs into his palm, and he hissed in pain. Her head snapped up at the sound, and her eyes flicked over his face, making sure he was okay before continuing. She rubbed at the knots in his hand, the tight and overworked muscles causing him pain. 

“Eleine,” he breathed now, awe colouring his voice, and she looked up in time to catch his face dipping to hers, giving her a slow, adoring kiss. She smiled against his lips, a tired, weak thing. He moved to pull back but she followed him, catching two more quick kisses and making him chuckle. Maker, she no longer cared about their audience. The times they had were precious and scant, and she would enjoy him whenever she could. 

Their horses dipped and rose, jostling them as they wandered down the uneven path. Cullen’s other hand moved to touch the only part of her he could reach, her knee, and squeezed it. She smiled, leaning into his side as much as she could, and feeling light as he pressed his forehead into hers with a shaky, content sigh. Her fingers slipped between his, rubbing the inside and undersides of his overworked appendage. 

He gave a slight groan at the massage, and she shuffled, the sound having gone straight to her core. The movement did not go unmissed, and Cullen gave a low, satisfied chuckle. 

She flicked her eyes up to find his lips upturned in a smug smile, eyes glittering and dark. “You’re a wicked man,” she breathed, and her nipples tightened at the expression. 

His tongue darted out to wet his lips, before he bit his bottom lip the way she loved. Eleine tried not to whine, she really did, but her expression must have said it all to him. She wanted that to be _her_ tongue and _her_ teeth. 

“Maker, Eleine,” he growled, too low for anyone around to hear, “I would say do not tempt me.” He rubbed his nose over hers, across her cheek, and then burrowed his face in her hair, lips pressed against her ear. “But all it takes is one look from you before I am.” 

Eleine’s breath hitched, her head spun, her hand jerking out to clasp his thigh. She felt it tense beneath her fingers, and Cullen hissed into her hair. She fought and fought with herself not to check the validity of the claim, not to reach out and find his hardness right front of an army. 

But the damned man made even breathing hard – how was she to keep her wits about her? 

She had to pull away, to put distance between them, but she was not leaving him with the upper hand. She _would_ make sure he was as hard as she was wet, and that as much as she would be lusting for him all day, he would be for her too. 

Eleine pressed her cheek against his, and moved forward to capture his earlobe in her warm, wet mouth. Cullen jerked, letting out another straining hiss. Eleine swirled her tongue around the sensitive skin, grazing her teeth over it, and then pulled back, leaving the cool air to tease it. 

She leaned back enough to catch his hungry, wild eyes, and then gave a slow, sharp smirk. “I yearn to taste you,” she purred. 

Cullen flushed, mouth dropping open in a breathless: “oh.” 

A spike of need gutted her, twirling down to her core. She leaned back in, looking up at him from beneath her eyelashes. “Since the first time you kissed me.” Her hand slid up his thigh, and he was shaking, breathing heavy. “I have wanted to slip to the floor before you, and take you in my mouth.” 

Cullen groaned, his hand on her knee squeezing almost to the point of pain. And then she darted up, giving him one last kiss, before kicking her heels into her mount, and angling it away. Cullen had followed her as she pulled away from the kiss, and the look he gave her as she winked at him was almost feral. Just before she turned the mount away completely, Eleine cocked her head to spy the bulge in his breaches. Oh, Maker. It was her turn to groan. 

Distraction, indeed.


	33. Thrall: Part One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here are two chapters for the agony of ten! Seriously one of the hardest things I've ever written :P I'm going to go have an afternoon wine and nurse my bleeding eyes. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy! 
> 
> Lots of love as always xx

By the time they made it to the sandy crag tucking away her advisor’s camp, Eleine was almost delirious with exhaustion. She sagged into her saddle, not knowing whether she was awake or asleep, barely seeing the sand beneath her, or her trembling hands that she would hold up before her eyes. 

Instead she saw those other Eleine’s covered in blood, her loved ones blood. Then Stroud’s hopeful face. She knew it was from that moment they all shared after her mark had given them a second chance. That moment they had all breathed out a wordless: _Maker, please._

He had never seen that prayer realised. 

She slammed all such thoughts to a halt by casting her eyes upon Cullen. Over the course of the day, he had unknowingly banished them for snatches of peace and joy. She had returned to him. Had another chance to… care for him. 

Then guilt would take a bitter bite at her heart, and no matter how she tried to remember Varric and Hawke’s tearful reunion, she could not forget what the cost had been. 

She still heard Hawke’s screams. 

He had tried to tell her that he did not blame her, and that he was thankful for her decision, she realised now. When he had made the offer to bed her. But even that consolation dwindled by the minute. 

Only when she forced herself to seek out Cullen, did her mind cut clear through the noise. Sometimes she would look over to find him already looking at her. Sometimes the expressions she found were troubled, scared. Others they were relieved and full of tender care. 

When she slid off the saddle of her huffing horse at camp, and hobbled into her advisor’s tent, Cullen placed a heavy, possessive hand on her lower back. She had expected him to drop it from her, but he kept it there, even as her advisors looked at it and stared. 

Cullen’s face was stone, and he remained unmoved no matter how many times Josephine gave a delicate clear of her throat. Leliana’s expression was smooth and clear, but there was a strange look in her eyes, deepening at each new glance at Cullen’s hand. 

His touch was searing and needy, and she could not help but gravitate towards his strength, his heat. She held herself back from leaning into his side, but kept them only a breaths distance apart. 

Eleine did not have the energy or the mind to capitalise on Leliana’s grief at her tale of the divine. She knew Leliana would have done that to her, but by all things holy Eleine could not handle an ounce more conflict. 

Cullen left first, with a few other things to attend to, and Leliana asked to speak with her alone. He gave her a steadying, gentle rub of his hand, before his heat vanished, and she was left reeling in the tent. Eleine was so tired she offered Leliana platitudes the woman would never have offered her. The words tasted bitter on her tongue, like stale tea and seawater wine. 

But she would do anything, anything to let her go after Cullen, to curl up into his side, to be held and whole again. When she finally escaped, she almost missed the grateful shine of Leliana’s teary eyes. Eleine frowned, swallowing back the bile that rose to her tongue at the expression. 

She staggered through the shadows of the sandy camp, dodging the quiet murmur of the resting soldiers and mages. Her vision was pulling to a point, her limbs feeling liquid and weak beneath her. 

When she stumbled into Cullen’s dark tent, nestled into a crevice in the cliff, Eleine barely had a moment to breathe and take in the sight of him, stripped down to his breeches, the hard planes of his body made sharp and delicious by the moonlight. He was stood over his table, reading a missive with a frown and a deep brow, one hand rubbing idle circles over his abs. 

Then he looked over, amber eyes glinting in the pale light carving through the open tent fold. The parchment slipped from his fingers, his face contorted into something desperate and pained, and his large form was snapping over to her. 

Eleine dropped her hold on the tent flap, casting them into darkness, and then he was on her. Hands snatched at her upper arms, yanking her to his front and crushing her to his hard chest. Their lips found each other’s with frantic need, kissing in short, sharp kneads, all harsh breaths and pained little noises. Cullen’s hands dragged up and down her body, from her hips to her rib-cage, up and down and up and down. 

Eleine whimpered beneath the onslaught on her fatigued body, pulling her thighs together as need spiked there in an instant. His stubble roughed against her soft cheeks as his mouth bruised against hers, and she flushed from head to toe, heart soaring somewhere up in the air above them. Then his tongue was forcing her lips apart, and his hands that crushed her hips to his, seared down to grab her ass. 

Eleine gave a strangled moan as he groped her, jerking her against his hardening bulge. Cullen groaned into her mouth, and Eleine felt light-headed with need. She wriggled against his hips, needing to grind a certain spot, Maker, needing friction _just there_ and—

Cullen bit down on her bottom lip just as he thrust himself against her, and she gave a cry. Her head fell back, leaning back into an arch as she gasped in air, trembling in his embrace. She only remained upright because he held her so, all energy, all power in her gone.

Her eyes darted across his flushed face to find his eyes dark on the curve of her exposed throat. Then all vision punctured black as his mouth latched onto her, tongue and lips slicking over the sensitive skin. 

“Maker,” he panted against her skin, “please.”

His hands fumbled with her legs parting them just enough, and pulling one leg up and around his hip. Then he bit down on her neck, marking her, and thrust forward, grinding against her throbbing, wet heat. He gave a strangled, hungry groan. 

“Ah!” she cried, “Cullen, oh Maker, _Cullen_.”

He gave an approving growl against her neck, the vibrations seeming to go straight to her core. He gave another jerk forward, hissing as she wriggled against him in pleasure. His mouth moved up from her neck to her ear, and she could feel his wicked smile against her skin, before his teeth bit into her lobe. 

“Oh, you bad man,” she moaned, heart spiking as he gave a low, dark chuckle. 

He nipped at the sensitive skin just behind her ear. “You left me,” he panted, “aching for you.” His hand on her leg gave a slight yank forward as he rubbed against her again. She whimpered, weak in his hold. “Maker. All I could think of was your soft skin.” His tongue swept and teased her ear lobe, and his teeth grazed over it. Eleine shivered and sighed. 

He was not pulling his hips back a fraction, but kept them locked together, and just kept _rubbing_. Rubbing and rubbing and she was jerking, gasping, hands flexing on his muscled-ridged shoulders, useless. 

Then he pulled back, pressed his lips against the shell of her ear, and whispered. “And if I would be so lucky to be able to hold you again.” There had been a note in his voice, a slight crack that belied a vulnerability, a panic that swam around them. They had come so close. _So close_ to losing one another. 

Her heart squeezed the way only he managed to make it. Eleine regained some strength in her arms, just enough to wind them around his neck and pull him closer. She rubbed her straining breasts against his chest, and whimpered at the friction on her pebbled nipples. Cullen’s breath hitched and then he gave a long, shuddering exhale. “You make a mad man out of me, Eleine,” he rasped, and there was more unstable emotion there than she had expected. 

She gave a breathless laugh. “And you make a sane woman out of me.” She kissed his temple, and cradled him in her arms as he shuddered and shook and weakened. 

Cullen buried his face in her hair and gave a shaky sigh. “Maker, I’m so tired.” 

Eleine panted, and gave a small, tired smile. “Sleep now, ravish me tomorrow?” 

Cullen gave a dark chuckle that vibrated against her skull. He moved to rub his nose against her cheek. He sighed again. “I have not forgotten your… touches from that night.” Eleine’s mouth curled into a weary, yet wicked grin. She could feel the heat of his blush against her cheek. “Nor have I forgotten how much I wanted to…” His hands squeezed her, and he hid his head against her shoulder. “Reciprocate.” Something in Eleine trembled, and she tucked her head in against his chest. “You left so fast I couldn’t…” He broke off, struggling to find the words. Her heart beat a heavy rhythm. 

She was lying to herself and to him if she said it had not been somewhat intentional. It was… safer if it was just him. She had been touched by many hands before, but none had ever been able to peel her down to her core, the way his caresses did. The care, the gentleness in his hands made her weak, so so weak. 

“Maker,” he gave a shaky breath. “How many times have I thought I should have gone after you, brought you back…” She tensed in his arms at the memory of the night, and he held her a little tighter. 

He cleared his throat, and there were a few thick moments in which they hid from one another in their embrace. Then he pulled back, one hand finding her chin, and making her look at him. She hesitated, eyes wanting to flicker anywhere but him, lest he see the fear, the trepidation – the vulnerability. But he called her name, voice so soft and tender and she just had to look up at him. 

His cheeks were red and the tips of his ears hot. Even in the dim, in the dark, she could see how red he was, and affection squeezed her heart. His eyes met hers with an embarrassed sort of determination, only to slide away and dart about the tent. He was nervous. She could see it, could feel it. Then he opened his mouth, and her mind was torn up into pieces and scattered to the wind. “I want to taste you too,” he stumbled in a rush. 

Eleine could only gape at him, cheeks burning in a way they never had for others. Her heart was lodged in the base of her throat, pounding and stuttering away. A little noise escaped her throat that was somewhere between an “ah” and “oh”, and entirely summed up her current mental capability. Cullen was doing his best, she could tell, to keep looking her in the face, but there was a wild panic in his eyes. 

“You’re not allowed,” Eleine cried, emotions bubbling, boiling, overflowing. Cullen’s eyes snapped back to hers in horror and he opened his mouth to say something but she cut him off. “You’re not allowed to use my own Maker damned tactics against me.” Her heart was pounding so maker damned fast, and there was so much pure _feeling_ in her chest, she did not even know _what_ she was feeling. 

Cullen blinked at her, cheeks warm and delightful and her throat closed over in an involuntary swallow. “You are a bad, _bad_ man.” And then she was laughing, head back, chest and stomach light. 

“I, um. Well, I. Maker.” 

“And _I_ am a very weak woman.” Eleine pressed up against him, and she did not miss the way his eyes darted down to her breasts. Eleine gave a sharp smile when he looked back up and saw that she had seen. Eleine leaned up before he could stutter apologies, and captured his mouth in a searing, hard kiss. Cullen moaned as she ran her tongue along the seam of his lips, before gaining entry to his. After a time of grabbing and groping and holding tight, Eleine pulled back, promises laden in her eyes. “Tomorrow,” she breathed, and his dark eyes grew wild. 

He gave her another kiss, and it was her turn to gasp and sigh. “Tomorrow,” he promised. 

“Tonight,” she asked, voice small, “just hold me. Please.” 

 

Eleine snapped awake as Cullen jerked, leg kicking her. She sat upright, head swimming, eyes darting around the gloom of the tent. What—

“Maker, no,” Cullen groaned, and her attention shot over to him. Even in the dark she could see his brows crunched together, his mouth pinched, his pulse thundering in his throat. He gasped as though in pain, and his body curled back in a throe of agony. 

“Cullen,” she breathed, hand sliding over his chest. 

He flinched and struck out, punching her in the gut. Eleine shouted out a cry, the blow feeling as though her stomach had been punctured with a spear. 

“Eleine?” his voice panicked, but she was doubled over, gasping for air, clawing at the sheets. “Oh Maker, Eleine. Did I— Maker, _what have I done_?” 

Eleine clutched her middle, struggling to inhale. Winded me, she wanted to say. Winded me in a way I never expected you to. 

He was apologising, flaying himself for the mistake, and it was inappropriate but she wanted to laugh. She choked, whipping away the tears of pain that had slipped from her eyes with the back of her hand. Cullen’s hands fluttered around her, wanting to comfort, she knew, but terrified of what he had done. 

She still wanted to laugh. 

“What a punch,” she gasped, and he went rigid. 

“ _Eleine_.” He moved as though to leap from the bed, and her hand grabbed his bicep, yanking him back down. “This is not a joke,” he bit, and she could feel the muscles in his arm bunch and tighten. “You need to leave, I cannot be trusted to— Maker, I cannot…” 

Eleine pressed her free hand against her chest, trying to calm the pound of her heart. She took deep, steady breaths in and out her nose, turning her face from him so he could not see her wince of pain. It throbbed, maker did it _throb_. 

He held himself back from her, arm tight beneath her fingers. She rubbed her thumb along the corded muscle, trying to ease him, but he only grew stiffer. He did not believe he deserved comfort, she knew. 

Maker, she was going to be bruised something hideous. 

“Don’t. _Don’t_. I do not. Eleine, I…” he struggled, and she closed her eyes as she gathered her energy, trying to find a moment in which her throat did not feel like it was in a vice before talking. 

“Shh, Cullen,” she soothed, stroking his arm. “Shh, love. It’s okay. I am not hurt.” Her voice was little more than a rasp, and he shuddered at the sound. 

“Do not lie to me, Eleine. _I hurt you_.” Maker he sounded so pained. He was trembling with tension and she finally gathered herself enough to turn to him. 

She tilted her head back, hair slipping away from her face, and looked up at him. He was a twisted picture of misery. His bottom lip bled beneath his white teeth, and his eyes shone with horrified tears. 

“No, love,” she cut, hands grabbing his cheeks. Her fingers pulled his lip free and the tears escaped his eyes, gliding over the pained lines of his face. She brushed them away, cooing to him, and he just watched her, shaking and crying silent tears. A bead of blood welled in the cut on his lips. “Nightmare?” she whispered, and his face contorted. He gave a jerky nod, and she hummed in sympathy, fingers moving to rub at the tension in his brow. “Ferelden circle?” she chanced. 

Tension leapt back into his body and she regretted the question almost as soon as she said it. He gave another nod, and seemed to be chewing on words in his mouth. The blood slipped down, curving over his chin, and she caught it with a finger before it could drop to the cot between them. She traced up the path it had taken, making concerned noises. “You,” he spat out. “You were there.” 

Eleine stilled. The blood drained from her face and she felt very, very cold. “Did I—” she broke. Her heart and stomach were a rock somewhere on the floor. Maker, it can’t be, it cannot be. “Did I hurt you?” 

His eyes widened in shock, his mouth popping open a touch. “No,” he spat, vehement, “maker, no, Eleine. _They_ were hurting you and I could not… I could not reach you and because of me you—” 

Eleine’s arms wound around his neck, and she clambered on top of him, into his lap. She was almost gasping in relief, and she tucked her head into his neck to hide the new tears in her eyes. She clutched him like the strength of her hold alone would banish the pain.

His arms shook in almost violent waves as he raised them, ghosting them around her. Slow, he held her, hesitant, fearful. Then, as she burrowed further into his chest, he let out a whooshing breath, and his arms clamped around her, squeezing her to him. 

“I’m so sorry,” he wept, “I did not mean to. To— _Maker_.”

“I’m fine,” she promised him, “I’m fine, love. It’s okay, it’s all okay now.” 

But he gave another violent shudder, and jerked her away from him. Eleine braced herself, almost having gone backwards off the cot, and he shook his head, slow, then in sharp jerks. 

“I need.” He sucked in a breath through his nose, face lowered so she could not see his expression. “I need to—” And he was up, swinging his legs off the cot, yanking on boots and a shirt, and striding out the tent. 

Eleine hugged herself, touching ginger fingers to the spot he hit. She winced again. All warmth seeming to have departed the tent with Cullen. She was left shivering.

 

Cullen did not return, and she could not sleep while he was gone. They had decided to leave for Skyhold in their meeting, and as they set off he kept his horse at the back of the army through the day, and did not seek her out. Eleine did not go to him either, but spent her energy on trying to give no indication that she was in pain, as the horse threw her about, and to dodge thoughts of Adamant. 

When she entered his tent that night, he was jumpy and uncertain, walking back and forth in front of his cot like a caged animal. The spluttering candle on his table cast his face into terrible shadows. 

“I’ll leave,” she promised him, voice cracking, “if you want me to.” 

It took him long moments of silence, long moments of war in his head, before he rasped out: “Stay. Please.” He drew his shirt up over his head, and ripped it off. He seemed to be all jagged edges and pain and fear. Eleine pattered over to him, hesitant, uncertain, watching him jerk himself into the cot. She undressed herself, and he was not looking at her, keeping his eyes hard on the tent canvas above him. 

He held himself taut in the bed, lying on his back, arms clenched around himself. As she slipped in beside him, and pressed into his side, she soothed a hand up and down his stomach, speaking calming words to him. She wasn’t sure exactly what she was saying. _It’s okay_ and _I’m here_ , passed her lips, but they felt inadequate. 

He had more nightmares. The assault on Adamant caused them, he said. The fear, the pain, the stress of _where is Eleine, is she— maker is she dead?_ Whatever peace he had found in sleep weeks prior was now gone, and instead they lay awake almost all night.

For days. 

Sometimes they would speak, her softly, and him almost not at all. In the exhaustion, in the pain, she had no idea what she was saying, and she doubted he did either. Stroud found her every time she closed her eyes, and it was worse than looking at apparitions of herself. It was looking at something physical, a true embodiment of her actions, of her vices. 

Other times she would sing to him, small melodies that seemed to ease him in some way. A true show of her desperation, if anything was. Singing to him. As though that was going to help heal him. 

“Do you… want me to go?” she rasped, many, many times. Would it be easier, if he was not anxious about a repeat of what had happened? But the thought terrified the both of them. As though her leaving would open a rift between them, would place a distance between them neither would know how to fix. 

“Stay,” he would whisper, “stay.” 

So she chased away the insecurities that sludged through her brain. _He didn’t want her here, she wasn’t good enough to help him, what could she possibly say to help him?_

She longed for Skyhold, as though that would banish their troubles. But it was a long time coming. Weeks, until they made their safe return. Weeks. She wondered what _did_ wait for them there. Harper, Landen, Sarlaros? Other reminders of her evils? 

Five days of being jerked awake after passing out on her horse, and Eleine’s strain was snapping. Stroud was staring at her, saying something with those sad, determined eyes. Harper lurked somewhere behind him, and it was the betrayal in her eyes that kept Eleine looking at her. 

As Cullen hunkered into their cot that night, moving to pull the thin cotton covers over him in laborious, exhausted actions, Eleine grasped them, and took them from him. Cullen blinked up at her, eyes misty with exhaustion and stress. Eleine folded them over by his feet, and he watched her, confusion pulling his mouth into a frown. 

She kicked off her boots, and his attention fastened on it. Other nights he had made a point of looking away when she undressed, but now she had caught him. Cullen pulled himself up onto one elbow, pained eyes flicking up from her face, back down to her hands that pulled her undershirt off, leaving her breasts bouncing in their amplifier. She took in his wavering form, shirtless but in his breeches, as she slid her pants down her ass. 

Lust flickered in those amber eyes, and his pupils dilated. She kicked off her leathers, and stood before him in her under things. His mouth was parting in need and awe and— his face contorted in hurt. 

“Touch me, Cullen,” she breathed, and his pulse jumped in his throat. “Touch me.” 

He clenched his jaw, and seemed to struggle with himself, eyes flickering between frightened gold and dark amber. Then he gave a tight, sharp, shake of his head. 

Eleine came closer, knees brushing the edge of the cot, and he looked away from her. The candle light had shown her the sheen of tears in his eyes. “Touch me,” she said again, voice stronger this time. 

“Eleine,” he broke, “I can’t.” 

She leaned down, hand finding his and holding it. He tried to pull away. “You can,” she said, “you have to.” He shook his head again, and it was jerky with desperation and fear. “Touch me.” Eleine squeezed his fingers. “You will not hurt me,” she promised, “you won’t.” 

“I did,” he cried. His eyes snapped back to hers, and the anger there she knew wasn’t directed at her. It was a prosthetic in place of his fear and guilt. 

“Touch me now.” She put one knee on the bed, and leaned close to him. Her nose touched his, her breath brushing his lips. His own breaths shuddered against her face, jagged with raw feelings. “With care,” she murmured. 

He gave a wrenching sob, and shook. His hand rattled in hers, but he let her pull it to her, and she unclasped his fingers from the tight fist he had balled them in. A single tear slipped from his amber eyes as she pressed his hand into her cheek. She nuzzled his calloused palm, placing a kiss in the centre of it. 

Eleine sat down on the edge of the cot, folding her legs, eyes closing as she held his hand to her cheek. “See, love? It’s okay. It’s okay, now.” 

She moved his hand down her neck, slow, and their breathing hitched. She loved how his rough hands felt on her smooth skin. The way it grazed and titillated. Eleine opened her eyes, smiling at him as she lifted his hand, and placed it flush on her belly, where he had hit her. 

The bruise was nothing more than slight yellow and green tinges now. But Cullen’s eyes found the mottled colours, anyway, and his bottom lip was clamped beneath his teeth. 

“I’m fine, love,” she assured him, “it was nothing more than a startle.” He looked horrified, and opened his mouth to argue, but she cut him off. “Listen to me. You and I have both suffered far, far worse in training.” He watched her, expression unhappy and unyielding. “You would never hurt me,” she breathed, “never, Cullen. No matter what you may have done in your past—" her voice hitched here, and his fingers squeezed her in thoughtless comfort, “you would never hurt me.” 

“I did,” he said, and his voice was no more than a ruined rasp. He clenched his eyes shut, teeth baring in a grimace. 

She shook her head though he could not see it. “No. I am made of much firmer stuff, Cullen.” Still he did not open his eyes, and she struck about in the dark of her ideas for something to say. “Have you never…” Dangerous, dangerous. “Hit a friend in jest or otherwise?” 

His eyes shot open, and he struggled for a few moments. “It is not the same,” he finally whispered. She made to nod her head and argue, but he just shook his, and she silenced. 

“You’re so small beneath my hands,” he breathed, and she clamped down on the shiver her body went to have, lest he misunderstand. His other hand smoothed over her stomach, to grasp her hip. “I could snap you beneath my fingers.” His thumbs dug in to the soft skin around her hips. His mouth opened a touch and his expression slackened in reverence. Then his face contorted, and her eyes stung. “I could break you,” his voice broke. 

What could she say? This was years of pain, of regret and guilt and suffering. How could she explain to him that he wouldn’t break her, that he couldn’t. There were no words to convince him, because it was the demons of his past he was facing, not the situation in front of him. 

Eleine swallowed, fingers clasping his chin, and pulling him to look up at her. “Break me,” she breathed, and his eyes widened, mouth slackening in shock. Her heart pounded with the truth of it. “I don’t care.” He looked at her for a long time, unable to speak, to make a noise. She did not feel a breath pass those lips of his. “Break me,” she trembled, “and toss me aside.” 

He jerked, fury splotching his cheeks red. “I would _never_.” His body seemed to swell, his muscles tensing. Her soldier was preparing for a fight. 

Eleine licked her lips, a triumphant smile slashing across her face. “I know. And now so do you.” 

He faltered, eyes darting across her face. His adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “And what if it happens again, hm?” His brow hardened. “What if I hurt you again and—”

Eleine pressed his lips shut with a finger. “Kiss it better,” she said, and traced the cupids bow of his upper lip. He was at a loss and could only search her face. She brought that finger up, up that slashing scar. She took in a shaky breath, and let some of her fears, her pain cloud her eyes. “Just do not leave me again, Cullen.” His eyes were such a storm and they reached for her, reached for her. “That is all I ask. Break me, but kiss me back together again.” 

He pulled taut, body tight and stiff with tension. 

And then he snapped. 

He clasped her to him with a frantic need, laying back down on the bed and tangling her atop him. There were legs and arms poking everywhere and it was an awkward angle, but her body flared with warmth and joy. She slid over him, organising themselves into more comfort. Her legs straddled his hips, her chest flush against his stomach, and her head on his chest. She listened to the pound of his heart. Uneven, heavy, it struck. His arms were seizing around her, clutching and dragging and squeezing. 

Up and down they ran over her body, leaving her shivering at the drag of his calloused palms and sword-roughened fingers. She was sat just below his groin, keeping the embrace intimate in a way that had very little to do with sex. 

Eleine took a few long moments, just breathing him in, tracing idle patterns on his chest with her finger tips. The pain that had pinched at the corners of her eyes, that had drew her shoulders back taut, finally gave way under the jagged beat of his heart. 

She could not see his face, and could not decide what she wanted more, to continue to hear his heart, or see what expression plagued his wondrous features. 

Finally she shuffled, and his arms pulled tight around her, as though afraid she was moving to leave. But she only slid up, belly brushing against his groin – which tightened at the contact – and sat herself on his firm stomach. She pushed up, to hold herself up on one arm, and look down at him. Her hair fell free around her face, the dark tips brushing the swells of her breasts. Cullen’s arms slid down her back, his hot, rough hands clasping her bare waist. Maker, his hands were so big.

Cullen’s eyes shone with tears she knew he would not let escape, and his lip was clenched between teeth again. Eleine cooed and brushed her fingertips over it, to the point where teeth bit down, and gentle, so gentle, coaxed it free. 

She brushed the backs of her fingers down the side of his face, and his eyes shuttered closed, a serrated sigh juddering out of him. His nostrils flared as he fought to control himself. 

But she didn’t want a controlled Cullen, a tightly wound Cullen. She wanted to yank his thread loose, and see him just _take_ what he needed. Just take from her and not worry, knowing she would catch his pieces as he shattered. 

He needed to see her strength, to know as well as she did, that there was no wave he could send crashing into her, enough to break her on the rocks. He could not break her. 

But even if he could, she would let him. Only him. Eleine tried to push every emotion, every little bit of care she had inside her for him, to her eyes, to her face. To her fingers as she cupped his cheek. 

Cullen opened his eyes, and saw her face, and air left him in a whoosh. He looked like a man who had been gutted.


	34. Thrall: Part Two

Up one of his hands came, a single finger outstretched. It was shaking, and she moved forward, giving permission, opening up to him. With a look of pleasured pain on his face, Cullen traced the lines of her face with a finger. Her eyes fluttered under the gentle, loving caress, heart bursting, almost hurting. Up, over her noble brows they brushed, down the straight line of her nose. Up her cheekbones, down the sharp line of her jaw. There was an ache in her throat, a tight vice around her chest and she never wanted him to stop. 

Then his finger dipped down the curve of her throat, and her pulse leapt. He stilled his finger above it for a few moments, and she squeezed her eyes shut, taking in jagged breaths through her nose. 

“So fast,” she heard him whisper, and she shivered. His finger kept moving, following the hills and valleys of her collarbone, before drawing a searing line down her cleavage. 

He groaned as his finger was hugged by her breasts, completely swallowed by soft flesh. She gave a strangled moan, arching into him, needing more, Maker _more_. 

She fought to keep her hips still, and not rock into his firm, muscled stomach. If she leaned back, dragged back, she wondered if she would find wonderful hardness thrusting up against her. She wondered if he would slam up to her slick folds, grunting and growling. 

His finger pushed in between the soft fabric of her amplifier and rubbed the underside of her heavy, aching breast. 

“Cullen,” she gasped, “Cullen.” He gave an approving rumble, but withdrew his finger. 

“Say my name again,” he pled, voice gravelly and husky and delicious against her tightened body. 

“Cullen,” she panted, forcing her eyes open to look down at him. Her heart stuttered, and more, even more, wet unspooled in her smalls. He had to feel it, how damp she was against his stomach. 

He could. His eyes widened, flicked down to where her sex sat atop him, and his chest heaved as he gasped in a breath. 

“For me,” he mumbled to himself, and she almost wanted to laugh. If she had the breath left for it, she would have. 

Cullen gulped, eyes dragging up from her cotton covered core to her pushing breasts, and then to her hungry eyes. His lips parted at the expression there, and his face almost crumpled from need. “Please,” he gasped, “I want to see you.” 

She had never taken off her smalls in front of him, nor he her. It was as though the longer they put aside sexual encounters, the more they were making a statement to one another that this was _more_. It was equal parts terrifying and thrilling to Eleine. She did not know what _more_ was. Had never had _more_. 

Neither, it seemed, had Cullen. 

She had thought he would wait for a reply, for her to move to show a yes. She had thought he would be too awkward, too abashed. But his eyes were flaring, his fingers burning up her rib cage, thumbs hooking underneath her amplifier. Eleine gasped, head crooking back, a mantra of _Maker, yes, please, Maker please_ thundering through her. 

Up, up her heavy breasts he pushed the amplifier, giving a long hiss as she moaned at the graze of callouses over her sensitive, soft skin. Then her pink nipples were exposed to the bite of cool air, and they hardened further. Cullen gasped in a breath, sounding like a drowning man coming up for air. 

Eleine bit her lip and looked down at Cullen, head cocked to the side, as her amplifier bunched above her swells. She gave a low, wanton moan at the expressions she found on his face. 

Mouth wide open, eyes slitted and dark with _hunger_ , Cullen looked up at her bare, ample breasts. Eleine gave a slow, sultry grin, and clasped the band, wriggling it up and over her head. She watched him watch her breasts bounce with movement, cheeks so, so warm. 

_“Maker.”_ His voice cracked, and it was all jagged and husky and so full of awe she wanted to melt into him. “You are so…” He shook his head, and there was such a flush across his face. “Maker take me. You are so _beautiful._ ” 

Eleine squirmed above him, whimpering, it was too much, all too much, cresting inside her. Want and emotions and things she barely recognised coiled her up tight. 

“Oh, Maker,” he gasped, hands suddenly on her hips and shoving her back onto his bulging cock. Eleine keened, and he jerked his hips up to her slick heat. Her smalls felt so damp and wet and warm. There was so little between them, so so little. 

“Cullen,” she gasped out, thrusting her breasts forward, not having the breath to beg her need. 

He ground into her, hands forcing her down on him with every ounce of strength in his arms, and they both gave a cry at the friction. “I want you so _bad_ ,” he was growling, “I want you wrapped around me, _calling_ for me.” 

He rut up against her swollen clit, and she rocked against the length of him, feeling his heat through the leather. She was smearing her slickness across him, and could only think _good_.

As he bucked his hips, again, again, harder, she could not tell which of them was claiming the other. 

Though it built and built in her, it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t _him_. Her hands scraped down his muscled stomach, and he groaned and clenched beneath her nails. She scratched through his fine golden hairs, till she reached the buttons and knot of his breeches. He gasped as she wrenched the buttons off, and untied the knot with expert ease. 

His breeches spread wide, exposing more of that lovely hair, and the cotton of his smalls. Maker. 

She whimpered. It was damp, damp from the tip of him. She gave a hard, _grinding_ rock against him, and his cock jumped and pulsed beneath her. He gave a strangled cry, that tapered into a feral growl. 

Gasping, fingers shaking and clumsy, she lifted herself long enough to yank the breeches down his hips, just enough, just enough. She had moments to take in the jut of his candle-light warmed hipbones, before he was crying her name, _begging_ her and she tore his smalls down and freed him. 

His cock, leaking and pulsing, sprung up, and he almost _sobbed_ when she grasped it between tight fingers. She moaned as he jumped in her hold, veins straining along the length, tip so wet and ready for her mouth. 

But before she could shove her slick heat against him, covered in cotton or not, his hands were seizing her hips, and pushing, and the world spun. She blinked, finding Cullen above her, her legs spread for him, knees either side of his hips. 

His eyes were sharp and wild and hungry. She shivered, outside, inside, all the way to her core. He was going to _take_ – to take what he wanted from her and _Maker_ the thought alone made her whimper. 

“You have this expression,” he whispered to her, voice low and intimate, “when you look at me sometimes.” The fingers clasping her hips were suddenly tucked into her smalls, and he looked up at her, eyes burning, panting, asking permission. Eleine gave a low moan, and nodded her head. 

“Wha—" her voice hitched and she heaved in unsteady breaths. She looked up at him from beneath her eyelashes, “what expression?” 

His cheeks pulsed with heat, his eyes shy yet so _needy_. When he spoke, it was nothing more than a low, dangerous growl. “Like you want to devour me.” Eleine gave a low keen as heat and wet spiked in her core. 

Cullen did not pause for a second, dark eyes on her wet smalls, leaning back onto his knees, before yanking them down her ass and up to her ankles. Her legs followed his hands, plunging straight into the air.

As Cullen pulled her feet free, Eleine spread her legs, letting them fall open, so _open_ before him. Eleine grasped and squeezed her breasts as he gaped at her, unable to tear his eyes away from her exposed cunt. She felt some of her need for him slip down and over her ass, no doubt wetting the cot. His eyes followed it, mouth opening further in a deep, throaty groan. 

“Oh, Maker, _Eleine_.” 

Then Cullen jerked down, mouth claiming hers, possessive and rough. She gasped, and his slick tongue flicked in to seize hers. He was everywhere, filling up the world, consuming everything down to a point that began and ended with him. His spiced scent bathed her, clouded the air, tucked her into a world where there was no room for anything else but him. 

She writhed beneath him, hips jerking up towards him, useless. Cullen growled, and seemed to be moving back. 

Eleine was having none of that. She latched onto his bottom lip, biting down, _hard_ , and Cullen gave a deep, animalistic growl. Her arms wrapped around his neck, trapping him to her, just as she arched up, needing, needing and— 

Her sensitive, pebbled nipples met his hot chest, and Cullen slammed a closed fist down into the cot beside her head, a long groan meeting her inhuman yowl in their joined mouths. Her toes tucked into the lip of his pants on the outside of his legs, and pushed them down. Cullen gave a grunt of surprise, and shivered as she exposed him, inch by inch. 

She pushed them down as far as she could, then repeated the motion on the inside of his legs, taking time to brush her toes against the sensitive skin of his inner thighs. 

He was a mass of tensing and straining muscles, clenching and tight above her. Cullen pulled back from her kiss, panting, heaving, face positively _wild_. “You are—” his voice broke, and he gasped in a breath, “ _divine_.” 

Eleine was startled into gasping, breathless laughs. “I need you,” she begged, “need you to fill me up and stretch me and—” 

_Fuck me_. 

Cullen bit down on her bottom lip, yanking it up. “Maker take me,” he growled onto her lips, “but you are _sin_.” He shuffled his legs, and she knew he was kicking off his breeches and smalls. “You have no idea the things you do to me,” he gasped, “how you twist me up inside with that _damned look._ ” 

Then his hot, hard cock was nestled in the valley between her thighs. They gave a cry together, and Eleine thrust _up_ , melding their hips together, clenching her legs around his ass so he could not escape. Hers, he was hers now. 

“M-maker,” he was heaving, “Andraste— _Maker_!” He rocked up, his cock slipping so easily along her slick folds, so close, so close to filling her up. He could pull his hips back, and plunge himself into her ready, throbbing heat. Eleine could only gape up at him, as his neck pulled tight and taut, teeth bared, eyes squeezed tight as though he were in pain. “What did I _do_?” he gasped, “what did I do to deserve you?” 

Eleine keened and arched back, bending like a bow, breasts shoving into his sweating, slick chest. Her ribcage was so tight with emotion, it felt as though she would never breathe again. 

“Mark me,” Eleine begged, “mark me as yours.” His eyes snapped open, pupils dilating, almost obscuring all that amber in black. His glistening lips fell apart in a low, hungry moan. 

And he did just that. His hips drove hers down into the cot as he rocked against her, again, again, sliding over her pulsing cleft in a relentless rut. One hand steadied himself while the other finally, finally, gathered a breast in his large palm, her nipple cutting into him. She overflowed in his hand and he almost whined. 

“I can’t,” he was babbling, “I can’t— I need, oh _Maker_ , I need you.” 

She was gasping, writhing, beneath him, and his mouth was latching onto her neck, and biting down. She arched, pulled tight, and _screamed_. She was close, so close, and he was claiming her, two fingers circling her nipple and yanking. His, she was his now. 

The rhythm of his hips began to stutter, and she knew he was close too, Maker so close, but all of a sudden he was gone, leaving her to cool air and useless bucks upwards. Eleine opened her eyes, to find him on his knees between her legs, shinning with sweat and shaking. 

Precum beaded at his tip, and she wiggled her hips, hands outstretching for him. With her hair loose and spread across the pillow, her body flushed and writhing, she knew she must look a picture of lust. At his wide, stunned eyes, she had such suspicions confirmed. 

_Come back_. “Cullen,” she huffed, tracing her hands up the inside of her thighs, over her hips and up to tease her breasts, trying to entice him back to her. But he only stared at her, mouth open, cock twitching. 

“I…” he gulped. Her heart stuttered, fear suddenly hard and sharp in her gut. Cullen swallowed and she tried to search for some steel inside herself to handle his coming rejection, for her to lose it _all_ , but then he was speaking in a tripping rush, face suffused in heat. “It’s not tomorrow,” he babbled, “but I want to taste you.” 

Eleine’s arms thumped down onto the cot, suddenly boneless, her mouth open and gaping at him. He drank in her reaction, eyes uncertain at first, and then _glittering_ with triumph. His mouth cut up into that crooked smirk of his and she had never ached so _bad_ for someone. 

Cullen leaned back over her, keeping his hips out of reach, and every small movement in his body looked like a stalking hunter. He brought his lips close to hers. “I’ve wanted to be devoured by you for so _long_.” She shivered and whined beneath him. “Wanted to see what it was like to be yours.” He gave a light huffing laugh. “How lucky I thought I would be. And now you’re here.” His voice cracked. “ _Spread for me._ ” 

Eleine gave a noise that was somewhere between a keen of pleasure and one of frustration. Never, never had she been denied her pleasure like this. 

Cullen dragged a heavy, hot hand down her bare side and she pressed into the touch like it would save her. “I want every part of you.” His hand pulled across the soft skin of her thigh, to brush so light, so Maker damned light across her sensitive inner thigh. “I want to look at all of you.” He gave her a slow, demanding kiss, as his fingers traced closer and closer to her damp core. She shuddered beneath him, pushing her hips up in welcome. But he kept it just out of reach, clasping her soft thigh beneath his rough fingers. 

His lips fluttered across her face, teeth nipping at her jaw, tongue lathing out in swirls. She was tight beneath him as he tasted her, melding into the cot beneath her. 

Cullen brushed his lips across her skin, dipping down to her sensitive throat, so tantalisingly soft. Goosebumps rose in the wake of his touch, leaving her gasping and arching into him. The reverence of the caress, the gentle care, the tease of something more that she was so _desperate_ for, was almost too much. She moved to squeezed her legs together, needing that delightful clench, but her knees found his hips in the way, and all she could do was clasp them and moan a complaint. 

He hissed as she squirmed beneath him, calloused palm rubbing up her bare thigh till he reached her hip. He held her down, tight, keeping her in place. Then his tongue darted out, teasing her pulse point, and she moaned, tilting her head to the side, baring her throat to him. He gave a gravelly rumble in response, lips joining his tongue, abrading the thrumming area. Then his hand on her hip flexed, and he _sucked_. 

Eleine jerked beneath him, crying out. He growled against her, jagged breath exhaling from his nose to tickle and tease her skin. Cullen let go of her hip to brace himself beside her, his other hand threading into her hair to hold her to his mouth as he kissed her. 

Down, his lips seared, down. His hot tongue carved fiery trails along the elegant rise of her collar bone, his lips and mouth leaving throbbing love bites in its wake. Eleine gripped his shoulders, needing to hold onto something, knees digging into his hips as he marked her. 

His tongue found the dip of her breast, and he followed it with a groan, lathing a hot path down her cleavage. She shivered, and thrust her chest up, up. Cullen made a low, approving noise, and licked his way up to her nipple. 

“Maker deliver me,” she heard Cullen pray, soft and quiet against her skin, “for I am in her thrall.” 

For a second she was perched on the precipice of need, his breath cooling across her nipple, making it _ache_ , and then he groaned, and his hot, wet mouth sucked on her. 

Eleine gave a cry, and she was lost over the edge, bucking up at him, hands clasping his head lowered over her chest. Nails scratching through his thick, soft curls, she jerked a moan from him. It vibrated along her breast, and spiked want and need and pleasure in her core. 

Cullen’s hand holding her head released her, dragging down her front to grasp her other, aching swell. She keened as he sucked and marked and kneaded, legs twining around his hips, trying to yank him down to her core. 

But he was a rock, immovable, despite his own trembling need. She tugged on his head, popping her nipple from his mouth with a wet sound and looked down at him, eyes sharp. 

Cullen looked up at her, surprised, mouth open, lips glistening. His eyes widened when he caught sight of her look, and he shuddered, groaning. “Andraste preserve me, but you are desire.” Before she could say a word, could demand beg plead, he was switching hands, weight moving to her other side, lips claiming her other breast. 

Eleine sobbed, legs stroking over his ass and up the hard planes of his lower back, and then down again to the straining muscles of his thighs. Her vision was puncturing black, and for the life of her she could not keep her eyes open for more than seconds at a time. 

His tongue fiddled with her hard peak, the tip teasing and swirling, and just when she thought she would break and cry out her need, he would latch onto her, sucking and pulling. 

“ _Oh_ , Cullen,” she moaned, “yes. Please, please.”

He twisted her up inside, tongue and teeth grazing and pleasing, but no matter how she moved or writhed, he did not bring their hips together. He did not seek his own pleasure, nor finish hers. 

Never. Never had anyone dared to tease her like this. What she wanted, she had always gotten. 

Until she met him and was enthralled by his gentle edges, caring eyes and strength. 

The popping, wet sound that Cullen made when he pulled back from her breast sent a delightful spear between her legs, and she whimpered. 

Cullen kissed his way down her mounds, moaning and shuddering in breaths. Just below the heavy lip he bit down and sucked the skin into his mouth, leaving another mark on her. She gave a breathless laugh that she knew he could not hear. By the time he was finished he would leave her covered in his brands of love, and the thought alone was a heady wine to her head, settling such warmth in her belly. In every touch of worship he placed upon her, he left behind his claim. 

What a delightful, wicked man he was. 

For what felt like an age Cullen moved above her, mouth and teeth inspecting the skin up and down her arms, from her ankles to her knees. His tongue traced along the lines of her scars, murmuring words into her skin she did not quite catch. But they were gentle and soothing and enough to strike her eyes in a way that spelled tears. His hands roved across her body, grasping, groping, exploring all that she offered him. 

It was like he was mapping her, learning and searing her lines and edges and curves into his memory. His rough hands smoothed over her tight stomach, twirling along the knot of scars there, kneading as though he was trying to soothe the pain away. 

She was left shaking and clenching her jaws tight to keep tears inside the cage of her lids.

Then he placed an open-mouthed kiss on her knee, hands stroking up and down her thigh, dipping in to the inside, brushing up so close, so close. Eleine spread her legs with a whimper, begging, beckoning. Cullen hissed above her, biting down on the soft inside of her thigh, and she squirmed. “Maker’s breath,” he breathed onto her skin, and then his tongue was out, hot and slick, tasting all the way down to the base of her leg. 

Eleine forced her eyes open, and they almost fluttered shut when they caught sight of him, head between her legs, shining lips so close, so close. She bit her lip as she watched him stare at her, his amber eyes flickering wild between black and amber. His breaths came out jagged and harsh, cooling and teasing her swollen clit, and she gave a little noise of need that had his eyes snapping up to her face. 

His eyes took in her expression, and he licked his lips. Eleine’s heart made a leap for the sky. His hands clenched her knees, locking them around his shoulders in one swift movement. Before she could heave in a breath, before she could send a prayer to the Maker, Cullen’s mouth latched onto her pussy, and the touch was like a spear to her core. 

His tongue ran along the seam of her folds, his lips brushing and cupping. 

White punctured her vision, and she was crying out, legs clenching around him. Cullen groaned, long and rumbling, on her pulsing clit. 

“Cullen,” she gasped, hands fumbling down the soft planes of her body to find his head. “Maker, Cullen, _please_.” She tangled her fingers into his hair, nails scraping over his scalp in a way that made him moan. 

He lathed the flat of his tongue up along her cleft and she cried out again, arching up into him, unable to stop her small grind against his mouth. Cullen gave a low growl, and nudged her with his chin as if to say _yes, love, yes, love_. She was so tight inside, all coiled up and drawn tight and trying to keep herself still but then he was teasing her clit with the tip of his tongue and she _couldn’t_ — 

Eleine clasped his head, pushing his mouth against her as she thrust upwards, slick folds rubbing over his lips and chin. 

“Oh, Maker take me!” Cullen gave a muffled yell into her, just as she arched and keened his name. 

Cullen braced himself on his elbows, his hands cupping her ass and lifting her up, up against his mouth as if to say _don’t stop_. He squeezed and kneaded her as she bucked and writhed, crying out in helpless pleasure. Her heels dug into his hard shoulder blades, clinging on as though she would go flying should she let go. 

Maker, the sounds he was making. There was pure delight in his breathless moans and possessive rumbles and each grind she gave, the more feral he sounded. 

He was a mass of tensing muscles above and below her. All strength and need and _Cullen._

His tongue swirled over her throbbing heat and speared into her. Eleine gave a strangled, broken wail, pleasure so acute it was almost pain. His stubble and lips were teasing and grazing and she was coiling up tight again. 

“Cullen!” she screamed, and she was bucking up, shattering beneath him, cleft pulsing and core shuddering and squeezing. She came in quaking waves, suspended and teased by Cullen’s moaning lathes of his tongue. 

“Maker, Eleine,” he was mumbling onto her hyper-sensitive core, “Maker.” Her legs lost the strength of their hold, and slid of his shoulders, trembling and flushed. Cullen lowered her onto the cot with all the reverence of and Orlesian placing a diamond on its show-case pillow. 

The his hand was on her cheek and she opened her eyes to find he had moved back over her. He was watching her face contorting in pleasure with an awe shocked expression. His lips, slick and shinning with _her_ were parted. His amber eyes melted warmth and want onto her skin. 

She gave a wrenching sob, hands cupping his face, and brought him down for a heated kiss that burned with the strength of her emotions. Care and adoration and gratitude. She was so lucky to have him and she tried to press it all into his slippery lips, tried to let him drink it off her tongue. 

He held himself up above her on one elbow, consuming her kisses with slight tremors. His other hand rubbed soothing circles over her flat stomach, dipping into the curve of her waist. Then it trailed down, and she tensed with every inch closer it drew to her still pulsing core. 

“Cullen,” she gasped, pulling her lips from his just for a moment, coming up to breathe. But before she could say a word, his forehead rested against hers, and two of his fingers circled her clit. Eleine jerked beneath him, galvanised by the lightning pleasure. 

“Eleine,” he growled, and she gasped and cried as those two fingers dragged down her slick folds. They pressed into her heat, just the tips, just teasing and she was whimpering and shivering beneath him. She forced her eyes open to watch his face, only to find him watching her, worry and care warring across his features. 

He opened his mouth to say something and she shook her head, cutting him off. “Not hurting,” she heaved, “good. Very— ah!” 

Cullen had pressed his fingers in deeper at her _good_. She could feel his hand shaking, feel it _inside her_. She gave a little buck of her hips, trying to tell him _yes, yes, love_. Cullen groaned as she took in more of his fingers, his knuckles being squeezed tight, and Eleine shivered at the noise. 

The _sounds_ it made as he slid his fingers in and out of her. Eleine arched into his chest, sweat-slicked breasts grazing against the hard, flushed planes of his chest. Cullen hissed, mouth snapping down to hers for a bruising, demanding kiss. 

This was an intimacy and vulnerability Eleine had never experienced before, and she doubted Cullen had, either. It left her crackling and shaken inside, but also so _full_. 

His thumb fell to her clit, and when she gave a strangled moan at the pressure, Cullen gave it a circling rub that had her gasping and clenching his fingers inside. 

“Oh, Maker, Eleine,” he groaned. 

She felt the nudge of his leaking tip on her hip bone, and pressed towards in in instinct, needing, needing. Cullen hissed, and shoved his cock against her side, rocking his hips forward. 

Maker he was all heat and steel and— 

Eleine reached down between them and grasped his straining member. Cullen jerked and cried as she closed a tight fist around him, rolling it upwards. His fingers plunged into her, harder, faster, and she writhed. 

He was straining and tensing and shaking above her as she tugged on him, hand and fingers growing slick with his desire. 

“Eleine,” he pleaded, or perhaps it was more of a prayer. “Maker, Eleine.” His fingers curled inside her in a way that had a sob of pleasure juddering out of her. 

In retaliation, her thumb rubbed over his tip, and he jerked into her hand, a long groan ripping out of him. Already, she was building again, cresting. Cullen was thrusting into her hand, grunting and jerking in jagged bursts. At each tighten of her fingers around him, each wet noise of her beating him, Cullen grew tauter, winding up and up. His fingers were spearing into her at an unrelenting pace, his thumb _grinding_ against her, and she was thrumming, spasming. He rutted into her hand, hard, her name tumbling from his lips, and she opened her eyes to see his face. 

Brow clenched together, hair glowing warm and rosy like his cheeks in the candle light, eyes squeezed shut – he struck her like a bolt to the chest. 

Eleine gave a cry as she burst, chest slamming up into his as she arched back. Her core clamped around his fingers, fluttering and saturating. 

Cullen grunted, then his hand holding himself up struck the cot with a closed fist, and he was calling out her name, again, again, thrusting, rocking. 

“Eleine,” he gasped, “Eleine, I—”

She could feel it, the way flooded through his cock, and she closed her hand around the tip, wanting to catch it, wanting all of it. 

He jutted into her palm, shuddering, gasping, pressing all his weight against her. Scalding and sticky, he came for her with a cry.

Eleine gasped beneath him, breathless, exhausted. He shook and spent above her, his arm no longer enough to hold him up. He fell atop her, heavy but so, so perfect. His chest heaved and shook, his heart thundering, sending vibrations dancing across her skin. They could not speak a word no matter how they tried, gasping and dragging in harsh breaths. 

Eleine moaned as he slipped his fingers out of her, and he pressed raptured kisses on her temple in between pants. She did not want to let him go, however. She wanted to hold him forever, wanted to hold his trust in her, his care for her, forever. 

But her arm was trapped beneath him in a way that could not have been comfortable, and so with a groan of regret, she brought her covered hand out from under him. 

“Maker’s breath,” he finally managed, voice harsh with breathlessness and exertion. 

Eleine gave a little laugh that was almost painful in her throat. She hummed in agreeance, cracking her heavy eyes open to look up at her hand held above her. 

How long ago had it been since she had seen his desire slip between her fingers, bead down her palm? Her heart was so buoyant and yet so tight. It was happiness. She was happy.

Cullen shifted on her, pulling himself up in slow, shaking movements. She had time for her lips to slash into a wicked little smile, before she looked over at him and caught his eyes. 

They went from slitted in satiation and exhaustion, to slipping from her face to her hand and then growing wide. Cullen flushed, lips parting. 

“Maker,” he flustered, “I—” 

Eleine gave a little laugh, smile sharpening further as she brought her fingers closer to her face. Slow, slow. His eyes tracked the movement, eyes flickering darker with each second. 

She looked straight into their amber depths as she brought her tongue out and licked up her index finger. Cullen groaned, a strangled _Maker_ leaving his lips. She swirled her tongue around her finger, before bringing it all the way into her mouth with a moan. 

Maker, he tasted as good as she had thought he would. Salty and warm and _Cullen_. 

His hand squeezed her hip and he swallowed, face pinching in desire. “Andraste preserve me,” he stumbled, “you are—” 

Eleine popped the finger out of her mouth, taking in the next one with another hungry moan. Cullen’s hand spasmed in its hold, and he yanked her tighter to him. “You taste divine, love,” Eleine murmured, lips leaving her finger for a second. He groaned, eyes hard on her ministrations, looking like he was being gutted. 

He watched as she drank him up, catching the falling trails with the tip of her tongue, smirking up at him all the while. 

When she finished, his forehead fell against her, his body shaking. He shook his head, struggling with his words. Satisfaction rolled through her. She had struck him silent. 

“What did I do?” he finally gasped out, and she cupped his face with her now mostly clean hands. 

She pulled him back to look at her, needing him to see the sincerity in her eyes. “You were yourself,” she whispered, the taste of him everywhere in her mouth, “so strong and kind and good.” 

His amber eyes were misty with emotion, as he lowered his forehead against hers, again. His jagged breath was a prayer. His grip on her arms a promise. They rested against each other, weak. 

It was unclear which one of them was trembling, but something told her it was both of them. Eleine placed her hands on his biceps, tugging at him. He rose in shaky movements, following her tugs to collapse at her side. Neither opened their eyes.

Exhausted, they shuffled on the cot, needing no covers. Their mingled heat would be more than enough.

Cullen wrapped himself around her the way he liked to, legs tangling in her own, his hands tracing up and down her body. Each dip into her waist and over her ass, Cullen gave her kiss. A tired, loving kiss. Her hands burrowed against his chest, along with her face. “Now you’ve broken me,” Eleine whispered into the cradle of his arms. He shuddered against her, holding her so tight, so tight. “And kissed me back together.” 

He pressed one last, hard kiss to her temple. “So this is what it is,” he breathed, “to be yours.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well that's it my lovelies! I hope you enjoyed xx 
> 
> Hoping you are all well and safe and happy <3


	35. Elderflower

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Super sorry this took longer than normal, Christmas time is craaazy. Merry Christmas and a happy new year to everyone!!! I hope you are all safe and happy and spoilt like you deserve xx 
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who has left comments and kudos and bookmarked and subscribed. You guys are the nicest, sweetest people, and I'm so grateful someone is enjoying this story. 
> 
> Lots of love, as always <3

Breath brushed across her face, soft and even. She was lying in the centre of a flame, cushioned and warm and vital. The arm under her head was hard with muscle and bone, flexing and twitching, but cupping her just right. She was cocooned in Cullen’s scent. She breathed it in, dissecting the layers. The inky oakmoss of his soap, a tinge of something sweet from his hair – elderflower? And beneath it all, the scent that was at his core, spiced and masculine, strong and electric. 

Eleine blurred her eyes open. Rosy morning light slipped through the part in the tent flaps, revealing dust dancing around his cluttered table. The corners of parchment lifted in the slight breeze that opened the tent flaps, the quiet fluttering the only other sound she could hear aside from Cullen’s breathing. The candle they had lit and forgotten last night had burned down to an overflow of creamy wax, beads caught down the edge of the iron holder in an eternal drip. 

Cullen hummed in his sleep, and Eleine looked over to her left, her nose brushing against his at the movement. A smile warmed her cheeks. 

He was wrapped around her like a big Mabari puppy, one arm underneath her head, the other cinched around her waist. Eleine’s hand flexed in its hold of his hip, the fingers pressing into the supple skin as though the touch alone would ensure he was real. 

She could not even begin to understand how their legs were situated. It was a mess of limbs, a tangle of bare-skinned warmth. Eleine would admit to no one how much she loved waking up like this. Except to perhaps him. 

How many times now had she woken before him, cuddled into his side, on top of him, beneath him? How many times now had they woken and kissed, gotten dressed and touched and grazed, and left for another day, knowing there would be another morning like this? 

She was languid and weak in a way that buzzed with last night’s pleasure. Her mouth kicked up into a smirk at the thought. As best she could, she craned her head up, peering down at her body. 

A slight huff of laughter left her at the legion of dusky purple bruises on her skin. In a soldiers line down her collar bone, on the sides of her breasts, across her stomach, a concertation of them around her left hip bone. One or two red ones by her knees and inner thighs. 

One big one at the spot he had hit her. It almost looked like an oil painting. A splash of red, a swirl of purple, tinges of green and yellow at the edges. Her hand not clinging to Cullen swept down to trace fingertips across it. 

She wondered how long they would last. How long she would have this proof of his affection. 

Would they have long faded by the time she told him the truth of her days in the circle? 

Eleine settled back down, fingers tracing idle circles against the bruise. The days were slipping from her, the hours and minutes of comfort sand between her fingers. Harper could be stalking Skyhold this moment, fury spitting from her lips. _‘Leiney, ‘Leiney._

But Eleine could not tell him yet, not now. She needed to be nestled here for just a little longer. Needed this healing for a moment more. 

Her hand on his hip squeezed, and she stroked his strong hipbone in delicate brushes. In small, careful movements, Eleine turned in his embrace, lying on her side to look at him. 

She gave a breathy chuckle when she saw the state his hair was in. Whatever tactics he used to maintain the curls had been thwarted by her fingers last night, and by the ventures of his sleep. 

It. Was. Wild.

Her smile stretched to the point her cheeks hurt. It seemed Varric had known Cullen’s secret. He truly, truly was a curly haired man. 

She had never seen it like this, had never seen him like this. His hair was a free mess on his head, curls bouncing and poking out. 

Eleine reached out a finger, and toyed with a small ringlet by his forehead. It was wound like a spring, tight, and yet when she looped it around her finger, soft. His hair was always soft. Scratching her nails through it last night seemed to have released more of that wonderful sweet scent of elderflower, and where she normally only caught hints of it, it was swimming in the air around them, now. 

She pulled her finger free of the curl, straightening the ringlet out as her finger slipped down its length. It bounced back up and her smile warmed all the way from her cheeks to her toes. 

Cullen’s eyes fluttered in his sleep, his lips parting as he breathed deep and slow. She traced that finger across the laugh lines around his left eye. Light – light enough so it would not rouse him. There was a scar just by his right eye, just a small pearl scratch, almost too pale to see. She ghosted her finger down the ridge, finding another one just above his cheekbone. And one there, by his nose, arcing up its bridge. 

The brightening tent brought more discoveries, lines she had not seen before – the dimple on his left cheek, the creases branching off that furrow in the middle of his brow, the curvature of his mouth’s laugh lines. The more her finger explored, the more she grew hungry to feel. 

Down the cut of his stubbled jaw. Her heart was pounding, words pressing at her lips. “Blessed are the righteous,” Eleine whispered, breathless, throat tight. 

Dipping under the lip of his chin, to slide across the smooth skin there. “The lights in the shadow.” 

Bumping over the mound of his adam’s apple, and curving into the hollow at the base of his neck. She fingered a pale scar there, lips pinching, eyes stinging. “In their blood—” her throat closed over, and she swallowed. She looked back up at him, wonder creeping across her heart. 

Cullen’s mouth twitched in his sleep, the scar cutting across his upper lip catching more of the light. His eyes quivered, golden lashes brushing against his skin. Her lips smoothed up into a smile. When her voice came it was no more than a wobbling breath, hushed with reverence and awe. “The Maker’s will is written.” 

Cullen hummed again in his sleep and shifted, the arm under her head folding up to clutch her head to his chest, the one around her waist moulding their fronts and hips together. Eleine gave a quiet giggle as Cullen nestled his head into her hair and gave a long, contented sigh. Mabari puppy, indeed. 

The hard ridges of his body were warm, and as she pressed her forehead into the hollow between his pecs, she was enveloped in his embrace. She gave the edge of his right pec a kiss, the hand trapped between them splaying open across his collarbone. Cullen twitched, and pressed forward into her. There was nothing, not even air between them, now. 

He shifted against her again, body sliding against hers, muscled legs clenching around her one between them. She thought perhaps he was stirring awake, and she gave his chest another kiss.

But Cullen mumbled something, too low and gravelly for her to understand, and it was thick and delirious with sleep. Then his arm around her waist was moving, stroking down, dipping along the soft curve of her body. His calloused hand grazed over her ass, and he cupped her soft, bare mound. Eleine pressed her fingers to her mouth to keep herself from making a noise – whether that be a laugh or a delighted gasp as his groin matched with hers. 

“Hmm. Eleine,” Cullen mumbled, giving a rumbling moan, and she felt his hardening cock nudge against her belly. Eleine hummed in pleasure and wiggled her hips, rubbing against it and drawing another moan from him. Heat unspooled in her core, dampening between her legs. Cullen’s fingers kneaded the handful of her ass he held, and she bit her lip to keep from making another noise. Untangling her leg from between his as gentle as she could, Eleine hooked it up and over his hip instead. 

She could not stop the moan that slipped from her lips as his eagerness found her wet heat. Cullen groaned and his body rippled above her, muscles tightening and bunching, as he shoved himself against her. She gasped as his weight pressed her into the cot, and he rolled on top of her, trapping their hips together and her legs under him. His arm remained caught beneath her head, and was twisted at an angle she was sure would wake him, if nothing else. The hand that had been clasping her ass now rested beside her head, fingers tangling in her free, dark locks. Eleine wheezed, the sheer weight of him strangling her chest. She did not even have the breath to laugh, but gave a few airy gasps and nudged his shoulder. 

Cullen’s head hovered above her, and she looked up to see him swaying, neck almost too weak to hold him up. A few seconds passed in which he roused a bit, knees and elbow finally lifting some of his weight off her. Eleine gasped in a breath, and managed a raspy chuckle as he licked his lips, half-asleep. 

“Good morning,” she chuckled, hand smoothing up his chest and neck to cup his stubbled cheek. 

Cullen blinked, amber eyes misty with sleep and somewhat dazed. He hummed, squeezing his eyes closed again. “’orning,’ he mumbled, and a lick of heat went through her at how husky his voice was. She rubbed her thumb under his eye, happiness a bubble in her chest. He gave another hum, but this one was tinged with confusion. He shifted his hips, and his erection slid over her damp folds. Eleine pressed her lips together to stop from laughing as his eyes shot back open and a flush warmed his cheeks and ears. “I—” He looked down at her, eyes blown and wild in shock. 

He took in her face, her teeth biting her lip to stop herself from grinning, and then his gaze slipped down to her neck, mottled with his love bites. His lids sunk to half-mast, the amber darkening to something far more caramel. He looked down at his work with sleep-swollen eyes, at the marks across her collarbone, to the ones around her tight, sensitive breasts. He paused at the colouring above the bruise, and his bottom lip was drawn between his teeth. 

Then his eyes found their joined hips, his hot cock resting on her pelvis and lower belly. “What?”

Eleine’s head, which had been craning up to watch him look at her, hit the cot as she laughed, peals ringing clear through the tent. 

“Maker,” he stumbled, “I was… I thought—” 

Eleine brought her other hand up to cup his cheek, and pull him down for a kiss. He gave a ragged rumble in appreciation, lips moving against hers in languid strokes. He tilted his head to the left, tongue flicking out to tease her bottom lip. Eleine gave a little whimper of complaint and amusement, challenge a lick of flame in her chest. 

Eleine wiggled beneath him, core beginning to pulse, and extricated her legs from under his. She spread herself for him, legs opening wide, fitting him between them with a shared groan and he tensed above her, twitching cock pressing down— 

“Um. Commander?” A voice called, right by the side of their tent. Eleine and Cullen froze, lips still locked, bare bodies tangled together. The voice cleared its throat, and it sounded like they were shuffling. “Commander Cullen? It is time to… we will be beginning the march—” Cullen pulled back from her, horrified eyes on the tent flaps, where a shadow stretched across the entrance. His ears were red and she withheld a snort. 

The messenger cleared their throat once more, and when their voice came again, it was no more than a frightened squeak. “Inquisitor?” 

Cullen looked back down at her, eyes wide and mouth open in wordless shock. She choked back a laugh, amusement a sharp spear in her chest. 

Eleine huddled into the cot, stretching her legs up either side of Cullen and wrapping them around his hips. She snuggled him back down on her, and he moved with her urging to lay his chest down on hers, holding his head just above her own. He looked over at the entrance of the tent with a panicked and lost expression on his face. 

“We’ll be out in a moment,” Eleine called the messenger, chuckling as Cullen’s head snapped back over to her. Eleine leaned up, and kissed him on the nose. 

“ _Oh_. Um. Sorry!” the messenger peeped out, before the shadow vanished and boots scuffed away in a run. 

Cullen groaned as she laughed, his forehead flopping onto her chest. “Andraste preserve me. Am I not to have _one_ thing private from my men?” 

Eleine chuckled low in her throat, hand coming up to scratch through his curls. She shivered as he hummed his delight onto her chest. The rumble vibrated through her ribs and straight to her heart and core. “You do realise they have known this whole time, love?” 

He grumbled something incoherent, sounding petulant and young. “No.”

Eleine gave a huff of laughter. “Hm-hm. I see.” Her fingers toyed with a bouncy curl. “If you wanted discretion, someone less conspicuous would have been a better choice, yes?” 

Cullen pulled his head up to give her a doleful look. Something sharp and cheeky flashed through his amber eyes, and she only had time to stiffen before he collapsed atop her, no longer holding up his own weight. The breath whooshed out of her with a loud “Oof”, and her head tipped back as she gasped in surprise and laughter. Cullen was boneless atop her, arms hanging over each side of her body, head returned to its position on her chest. 

He chuckled, low and delicious, sending vibrations waving through her, as she squirmed underneath him, struggling for breath. The bursting need to laugh, to call his name, to complain, was overwhelming her, torturous in that she needed breath to do all those things. 

Eleine reached down, poised her fingers, and scratched up the bare, warm ridges of his back. Cullen jerked, a gasp knocking his chest against hers. By the time she reached his shoulders, he was groaning and shivering, and he rolled onto his elbow, relieving the pressure on her chest. 

Eleine gasped in a breath, only for it to shudder out of her after a moment in loud, choking, peals of laughter as he looked down at her, face a mixture of childish consternation and lust. He was pouting. Her Commander, with his amber eyes darkened, hunger flashing in their depths, was pouting. 

He gave a huff of his own, rolling his eyes as she continued to run away with her merriment. His lips quirked up into that crooked smile of his, and he smirked down at her while she regained even breathing. 

“You are—” He shook his head, smile creasing his face into beautiful, gentle lines. He leaned down, giving her a quick kiss to the nose, like she had him. He pulled back, only to hover his lips above hers. “Trouble,” he breathed against her. 

Eleine pressed up, the world dripping away, losing its colour as his soft voice snatched her heart. But he jerked himself back before she could seal their lips. It was her turn to look hard-done by. His smirk only grew. “Let us not give them more to speculate on by taking too long.” His voice sounded a tad thin with lingering exasperation, and she snorted at him. 

She wiggled her hips, impish. “Well,” she teased, “get up off me then, you big Ferelden oaf.” 

His lips pressed together as he fought to control himself as her thighs grazed against his arousal. He grunted, amber eyes squeezing shut. “O Maker, hear my cry,” he began to pray, a bead of sweat dripping down from his temple. 

Eleine barked out a laugh, challenge relighting in her chest. She rolled her hips up towards his, almost, almost reaching. 

Cullen hissed, teeth clacking together. “Guide me through the blackest nights.” He pushed up on one arm. One shaking pillar of strength. 

Eleine licked her lips, something sharp and hungry in her chest. She scratched her nails down his quivering chest, nicking over his nipples and bumping over his abs. His head lolled to the side with a groan. 

He opened his eyes a slice to regard her with crackling, heated amber. “Steel my heart against the temptations of the _wicked_.” He gave her a crooked, toothy grin. Eleine gripped his hips, chuckles tumbling from her lips as he descended over her once more. Cullen kissed her, just a slight, lingering brush. “Make me to rest in the warmest places,” he finished against her lips, nothing more than a low, intimate whisper. She felt his smile against her own, and when he pulled back, she was left to stare up at the soft, tender expression on his face. 

There was something pressing at her throat. It was a word. Words? Things she needed to say, needed him to hear, to understand. Her chest was overflowing with it, her lips being forced open with the torrent. 

“Maker’s breath, I must leave you _now_ or I never will.” Cullen heaved himself off her with a rueful sigh, swinging his legs off the cot and standing up. Whatever it was petered and spluttered in her, a flame doused with water. There was a stab of disappointment, but it was washed aside in a moments glance at Cullen. 

Maker, did she have an eyeful. Eleine rolled onto her side, her left leg folding over her right in a way she knew would make the curve of her side look its best. She cocked her elbow and held her head up to look at him, her hair falling about her like a dark shroud. Her other arm curved under her breasts, fingers stroking a scar.

Muscled calves, firm and rippled thighs. Eleine smirked at the full sight of his tight ass. The little hollows in his lower back, the tapered, thin waist. She cupped her breast, two fingers finding a hard nipple to roll. From this angle she could _just_ see his partial erection, and Maker how she wanted to grasp those hips, turn him, and lick till he was once again pulsing steel. 

The muscles on his back rippled as he stretched his arms in front of him, swinging them back and forth to work out some tension in his shoulders. He cleared his throat, craning his head back to look at her, mouth opening as though he had meant to say something. 

Whatever it was, was lost the moment his eyes alighted on her languid form. 

His eyes jumped over her, from the curve of her ass and waist, to her smirking face, to her hand kneading her breast. His lips hung parted, a flush striking his cheeks and ears. The slice of morning light haloed around him, making liquid and molten his golden, wild hair, and soft his edges. 

“Maker, woman,” he cut, voice haggard, “you make me forget myself.” 

Eleine smiled, and it was sharp with hunger, but raised with care. “I like you’re hair,” she purred. 

Cullen blinked. A hand came up to rub his head. He blinked again, then seemed to deflate with a sigh, cheeks pinkening in embarrassment this time. “Maker.” He shot her a look that was both accusatory and pleased. Eleine merely smiled back at him, serene, and not a touch sorry. 

“Let me help you dress.” Eleine swung a leg off the cot, raising herself up in a smooth, swaying motion that Cullen’s eyes tracked every second of. He had tensed the moment she stood, an arm coming to curve around his front protectively. She almost snorted. There was a wariness in his eyes that showed _yes_ he did know what lied beneath the smooth, innocent shine in her eyes. 

He _did_ know the wicked glint meant whatever was to come was going to be some terrible tease or other. 

He cleared his throat, tearing his eyes away from her swaying hips. “Eleine,” he began, warning and _want_ fighting for purchase in his voice. 

Eleine leaned over, keeping her eyes on his face, and plucked up his smalls that he had abandoned last night. She pulled herself back up, slow, slow, dragging the cotton up her bare leg, between her thighs, watching his face chip and darken with every movement. His hand flexed and fisted by her side, and she wondered if he was fighting the temptation to grab _her_ or his hardening cock. 

Eleine clutched it to her chest as she took the remaining two steps between them. His heat buzzed off him, tingling along her skin, and she wavered for a moment, wanting to press in, to feel the rough drag of him against her. But she caught herself. 

Cullen had turned his body towards her as she moved to him, unbidden, looking like a man caught in a thrall. Eleine locked her eyes in his, two fingers ghosting over his taut side, and leaned forward, tight nipples just brushing his chest, feeling his sharp intake of breath. 

Then she slid down in front of him, smirk turning sharp as his eyes widened the closer and closer she drew to his arousal. She trailed her hand down with her, nails scraping over the ridges and curves of his side. Eleine gave his hipbone a hot, open-mouthed kiss, her tongue swirling around the point. He shivered and shook beneath her, goose-bumps raising along the path her hand had followed. He tasted like honey and salt, and she flicked her tongue out for another taste, thirsty for more. 

Cullen drew his bottom lip in between his teeth, his brow scrunching together as he fought to control himself. “Eleine,” he mumbled out, and it was as much a plea as it was an order. 

Eleine chuckled, falling to her knees, hand gripping his hip bone, his arousal jutting out, so close, so close to her face. Her eyes were torn from smouldering amber to take in the sight of him, straining and hot and _all hers_. Maker how she wanted to take him in between her lips – tongue and throat milking him till he cried and twisted and could not stop himself from grasping her head and thrusting into her mouth. 

She let out a moan that had his cock jumping and leaking, and she shook as she refrained from touching him. Later, later. 

Instead, her hand on his hip grazed down his leg, the muscles bunching and tensing beneath her touches. Eleine kissed the inside of his shaking thigh, tongue tracing up a scar there. Cullen jerked and let out a strangled growl. 

Her fingers found his ankle, and she twirled light circles around it, before urging him to lift his foot. He did, trembling, and she slipped his smalls over his foot, giving his thigh another kiss. 

She switched her focus to his other leg, nipping at the skin on his inner thigh, just above the knee, jerking a gasp from him, and pulled his smalls over his other foot. 

She glanced up at him, eyes burning up the expanse of his legs, to his straining arousal, to his corded chest, to his face twisted in need and restraint. Eleine smiled at him, and stood, dragging his smalls up, up, as she went. 

As she straightened, hair tumbling back over her shoulders, she slid her hands around to his ass, fingernails scraping as she pulled his smalls up all the way. Cullen’s breathing was heavy and jagged, and he groaned as she tucked his member in, her thumb rubbing over his wet tip. A few fingers wrapped around him, light, teasing. 

“Eleine,” he rumbled, “Eleine.” 

She gave a light giggle, stealing a quick kiss from him, that he tried to follow. 

Eleine put distance between them and turned instead. She shook her ass at him, drawing a deep chuckle and a groan from him, before plucking up his breeches. She returned to him, repeating the process, with teeth nipping at him, tongue finding the sensitive dips and creases of his body. He moaned and whispered her name, his hands squeezing her shoulders as he leaned over her, seeming to lose the strength to hold himself up completely. 

As she stood before him again, she made sure to knock and knead his bulge as she buttoned his breeches and retied the knot. One button, press, another button, cup. Grab the cord, find his tip with the base of her palm and _rub_. He was a rippling, shivering mess, now, one hand clinging to her bare hip, his head buried into her neck, gasping breaths flushing across her bare skin. 

She leaned forward to soothe a kiss on his pec, just beside his nipple. Cullen’s other hand moved as though he was going to grab her. 

“No,” she breathed against his skin, looking up at him from beneath her lashes, “stay still, love.” His eyes, shadowed from the tilt of his head, looked dangerous and animalistic. 

She saw his jaw set as he stilled, and every fibre of his being seemed to vibrate tension. She smirked. 

Eleine leaned forward tongue darting out to trace a hot path along the curve of his collarbone. Cullen jerked, a strangled noise grunting from him as he struggled to remain still, and she pressed her smiling lips against his skin. “There’s my good knight,” she whispered against him. 

She found his shirt tossed over the back of his desk chair, and was tempted for a long moment to keep it for herself. To wiggle it over her head and let it drape down the soft inclines of her breasts, feeling the cotton tease her peaked nipples. The scent of him was woven into every cotton fibre, spice and sweetness and heat ensconced in the garment. 

But he could not very well wear _her_ undershirt in return. 

_Though_. 

The image did do something delightful to her core. 

Eleine returned to him, having felt his burning gaze on her the whole time. She leaned into his front, breasts yielding against his hard chest and raised her arms, pausing for a moment so he could take in the curve and contour of her bare body.

His head cocked to the side, neck seeming weak, another slight groan slipping from his parted lips. 

Cotton whispered over his skin as she raised the shirt for him, and for a moment his hot, hard eyes were lost to her as he pulled his arms and head through. Then he was back, no intensity lost, looking for all the world like a man on the brink of snapping. 

At her smirk, his lips pulled back in a hungry snarl. His hands snared her ass, and he jerked her to him. 

Before she could protest, before her wicked mouth could open with more words of incentive, he was on her, lips bruising against hers in demanding touches. Eleine groaned, arms winding around his neck. His cinched around her waist; strong, iron bars from years of swordplay. 

He kissed her, again and again, teeth nipping at her bottom lip, tongue laying claim to her own, barely giving her a moment to breathe. Deep growls rumbled up his chest to his throat and straight into her mouth. 

Desire was coiling up tight in her, and it was all she could to squeeze her thighs together, aching, aching to be filled. He would pull back, just a touch, and she would think it was over, only for him to snap back to her, another kiss stolen, another, another. 

He was trying to tear himself away even as he caged her against him. 

He was everywhere, needing, taking. 

Eleine dug her nails into the supple skin at the back of his neck, moaning her encouragements.

But he wrenched himself back, hands clenching her hips and holding her still. 

Cullen panted in front of her, deep, shaky breaths being inhaled and exhaled from his nose. His chest heaved with every breath, stiff and taut with restraint, as he held her at arm’s length. “ _M-maker’s_ breath.” 

Eleine felt boneless and weak, her limbs buzzing as much as they were trembling. It was all she could do to stand and not throw herself in his arms to hold her. “You naughty,” she gasped, lips sharpening into a satisfied smile, “devious knight. Taking advantage of your poor noble charge.” 

Cullen groaned, one hand leaving her hip to cover his face. His cheeks were pink, and even as he fought to pretend, she knew he had liked it. “Maker,” he rumbled, “do you delight in driving me mad?” 

Eleine gave a dark chuckle. “Yes, just as much as I—” 

A laugh from outside the tent shot through the air between them, loud, pealing clear. They both stilled, his hand on her hip squeezing. But the sound dallied away, along with it the sound of tramping feet. The camp was readying. 

And she was running out of time. 

Eleine looked over and found, same as they were every morning, his gloves folded on his desk. 

Cullen straightened himself, shoulders drawing back, hand leaving her hip. He was preparing to leave, readying himself for his role as Commander.

If he was wearing his sword, she would think that his hands would have clasped the pommel by now. 

Eleine sashayed over to his desk, just as he cleared his throat, no doubt to announce his departure. She wondered, for a fleeting moment, if he would leave with his hair like that. 

Gloves in hand, she returned to him, trying to keep her expression neutral, her eyes clear of any impure intent.

His mouth opened to say something, his eyes fixed above her neck line, lest he be tempted. Eleine held the gloves up, silencing him. 

Cullen tilted his head to the side a touch, regarding her with narrowed eyes. She almost laughed. 

“Let me help you finish,” she said, tone smooth and clear as glass. A lick of delight went through her chest as his eyes flickered in even more trepidation at her tone. He knew, he could read her. 

How did he read her so well already? 

Still, he let her come to him, looking for all the world like an animal regarding a possible predator. 

Eleine held his gaze, even as she clasped his hand in hers, soft fingers dancing over his calloused palms. She kept him looking in her eyes as she slid the glove on, finger by finger. At the snug envelop of each finger, he relaxed, shoulders falling down, arms losing their tight bunch. 

Eleine’s soft smile keened to a point. 

Rather than tug his last glove onto his hands, Eleine took him by the wrist, and lead his hand to her core. Cullen’s eyes grew wide the closer it drew, and he bit down on his bottom lip. She paused, letting his hand hover in the air below her cunt, feeling the heat and moisture roil of it. Just a moment, asking if he wanted it. 

Cullen’s hand pressed up, a little noise of need leaving the cage of his lips and teeth. 

Eleine leaned her head back, neck exposing in a delicate curve, lips parting in a wet pant. Cullen’s pupils dilated, breathing quickening. 

She pressed his hand against her, his rough fingers and palm cupping her, and dipped the tips of his fingers into her slick, pulsing cleft. His mouth dropped open and he groaned, eyes flitting down into ruby dark slits. “Maker. Eleine. You’re so—” 

Eleine gave a tight lipped moan, and leaned up, kissing just by his mouth. “For you,” she whispered, tongue tracing along his bottom lip. “I need you, Cullen.” 

His fingers surged up inside her, and jerked a surprised: “ah!” from her. 

“Tight,” he grunted, “Maker, you are so hot—"

Eleine wanted to widen her legs, to clutch his front and lean against him as he fucked her with his coarse fingers. He would steady himself against her, head falling to her shoulder as he gasped and panted with her, his muscled arm bunching with the lewd thrusts. His other hand would squeeze her hip almost to the point of pain, holding her in place, the rub of his glove sending electricity to her core. 

Armoured feet marched past the tent, the rhythmic thumps sounding like the crack of thunder. 

Eleine tugged on his wrist, and they both groaned in mingled frustration and desire as his fingers slipped back out of her. 

Eleine rested her head against his chest, trying to even her breathing and regain control. Maker, she wished he did not have to leave. She wished she did not have to leave.

One more hour. She would give her arm for just one more hour. 

Cullen’s arm curled around her, bringing her into his embrace. He rested his head atop hers, giving a jagged sigh. “I must go,” he mumbled, “as much as I wish to be lost to more of your… temptations.” 

Eleine covered her snort with a sigh. She could feel the heat of his blush against her head. She pulled back, and his arm released her, returning to his side. 

She smirked at the glistening tips of his fingers. Cullen followed her gaze and cleared his throat, cheeks and ears colouring. Eleine reached out for it, and in her periphery she saw Cullen’s eyes flicker. 

But her fingers curled around air. His hand was up, by his mouth, fingers pressing against his closed lips. Eleine blinked, mouth parting, throat closing over in an involuntary swallow. 

Cullen’s eyes burned in hers, dark, devious. His body _hummed_ in satisfaction as he watched her reaction. 

His lips parted. She felt her core clench, wetness spreading. 

One finger was teased with that pink tongue, tracing up the length, swirled around the tip. She knew that tongue. It was supple, hard and strong. And flexible and wet. 

And hot, Maker so hot and he was closing his lips around the finger, sucking her arousal off it. Eleine gave a strangled moan, jolting her legs together to stop herself from shoving her own fingers up her cleft. 

The other slick finger was tugged in by his curled tongue, and his eyes closed, a low, rumbling groan coming from his chest. She knew what the groan felt like against her cunt, knew how it vibrated _inside her_. 

Her legs were weak, liquid and shaking beneath her. 

“Cullen,” she gasped, and his hands were there, on her hips, holding her up even as she sagged. 

He jerked her to him, crushing her against the hard planes of his body. He bent her back, and she arched beneath him, till he loomed above her, obscuring the tent, the world, filling it up with him, him. Cullen. 

He brushed his lips against hers, voice low and breathy and intimate. “I’ll have the taste of you on my lips all day.” 

Eleine gave a strangled noise of frustration and pleasure. Her hands found his shoulders, and she clung on. “Wicked knight,” she whined, “tormenting me.” 

Cullen’s forehead rested against hers as he gave a jagged laugh. “Me? You torment me while I wake.” He nuzzled her with his nose, kissing a searing line to her ear. “While I sleep,” he whispered against the shell of her ear. “I wake to the smell of you.” He nipped on her lobe, and she squirmed, wanting to spread her legs and rock herself against his leg. “And I smell you on me all day.” His tongue flicked the sensitive skin behind her ear, and Eleine fought to steady her ragged breathing. “Sweet and wicked and—”

“Do you want me too weak to walk out of this tent, Cullen?” she cried, shaking as she held onto him. 

He gave a snorting, chuckling laugh of triumph. He pulled back, setting her on her feet and helping her upright. His hand lingered on her hip, hot, heavy. He smirked his crooked smirk at her, teeth showing as it grew wider at her addled glare. “Perhaps.”

Eleine shook her head, fond smile curving her lips. Her hair swished across her shoulders at the movement, the tips brushing across her tight nipples. She laid her hand on his forearm. “Terrible man.” 

“I believe this game is mine,” he grinned, startling a laugh from her. 

She let her eyes sear down the expanse of him, slow, loving the way he fidgeted at her gaze. “Hmm.” Her smile sharpened to a point. “Perhaps.” Her eyes returned from his bulge to his coloured cheeks and averted eyes. “Perhaps not.” 

He pitched his eyes to the heavens. “Maker take me. I must go before I forget myself again.”

“Yes,” Eleine sighed, rueful. “We have taken too long already.”

With another sigh she set about to help him gather his armour, the rising heat of the desert stifling the air between them. The slice of morning light had begun to sear her exposed skin every time she passed through it, and Eleine grew wearier at every cross, knowing the day to come was going to be burdensome and long. 

His plated arm guards were buckled on, her fingers tugging and knotting with ease. He watched her, blinking and silent, looking surprised every time she managed without his guidance. 

She almost snorted.

Ex-Templar he may be, but he still wore his armour like one. And getting a Templar in and out of their armour quickly was something Eleine knew well. 

She wondered if he’d ask, but her glance up revealed only a softened expression that sent a spike of pleasurable pain to her heart. 

Game long forgotten, Eleine smoothed her hands over his chest, pulling the buckle of his mantle nice and tight. She kissed his jaw as she did so, small, loving pecks that he leaned into with a shaky sigh. She propped up on her toes, one hand snaking over to tuck in his outer cloak into the metal plating, the other coming up to cup his cheek. 

Eleine soothed kisses over his cheekbone, to the side of nose, and the corner of his mouth. 

Cullen hands clasped her hips, and he held her so gently, gloved fingers light on her skin, as though she were a leaf he could crush. 

When she finished, she pulled back, settling back on her heels. Cullen’s face was soft, bare. His eyes honeyed and melting with emotion. 

“I want,” he breathed, “to hold you.” His eyes dropped from hers, shy and uncertain. “Damn the army, damn the march.” His fingers tightened in their hold, and he peeked over at her. “I want to stay—” he cleared his throat, voice dropping to an almost whisper. “And hold you.” 

She felt like he had poured warm, liquid amber through her veins. She was vital and happy with him in a way that she had never been with anyone. Cullen was drinking in her face, and she did not know what expression she held, but whatever it was, made his eyes glitter gold and his lips to soften into his crooked smile. 

_Stay_ , she wanted to say. _Let’s stay_. 

But that was not the kind of man Cullen was. He was a man of duty, of responsibility, of generosity and altruism. She would not place herself in a position where he would need to compromise that for feelings for her. She could not. She could not cause him that sort of pain. 

So she placed a hand on his cheek, and gave him a soft, lingering kiss. “Me too, Cullen.”

He gave a wobbly sigh. “There is always another thing.” 

“We have weeks remaining,” Eleine reasoned, but her voice was subdued, “many more mornings and nights yet.” 

Cullen folded her up into his chest, armoured body hard but as comfortable and warm as it had been the day of their first kiss. “Yes,” he sighed, head resting atop hers, “I pray that is so.” 

Then he cleared his throat. “I do not… Do you—” 

“Hmm?”

“That is… I. Maker.”

“Yes, love?”

“Do you want me to… _dress_ you too?” 

Eleine’s chest burst with emotion, light and bouncing. 

She laughed.


	36. Baker's Arms

Each inch of traction the rippling sun gained against the bronzed horizon, the more the heat pulsed against her skin. A few minutes outside the tent, corralling soldiers into flexible lines for the march, and Eleine found herself already sagging beneath the weight of the sun, mouth growing stale and skin sticky in the heat. 

As she saddled, surveying the soldiers preparing to march, Eleine realised that no one was looking at her anymore. Their eyes had been skittering around the sand dunes and crags all morning, and it was only now she realised it was because they were avoiding _her_. 

They always looked at her. In fear, in hope, in reverence. Hate. 

And yet. Eleine cocked her head, trying to catch the eyes of a passing mage. The man saw her, his eyes widened, and he snapped his head away, facing the other direction. 

Eleine straightened up, more than a little surprised. 

Varric chuckled to her right, and she peered down at him, raising a brow. “Well, shit, Terror.” He patted Bianca with one hand, the other steadying his own mount. “What did you expect after the, ah… _commotion_ last night?” 

Ah. Eleine sat back on her mount, satisfaction trilling through her. She smiled down at Varric, watching him scramble up the side of his pony. “Commotion?” 

His amused eyes flicked down from her face to the purple marks splotching her exposed chest. He gave a little smirk. “Oh, just a little tussle.” 

Eleine licked her lips, smile sharpening at the edges. “Little? I think not.” 

Varric snorted and Solas gave a long sigh as he loped atop his Hart beside her.

Eleine tilted her torso around to grin at him, not repentant in the least. She caught sight of a fidgeting Cassandra atop her chestnut horse, cheeks blooming red and lips pinched in embarrassment. 

Eleine looked back at Varric to find his eyes sliding from the Seeker to her, as well. Their eyes met, and their peals of laughter chased the wind across the flighty sands. 

As she kicked her heels into her dusky steed, the wind captured a few loose strands of her dark hair. They cut across her vision, black slicing the burnished world. Cullen’s scent curled around her skin in a lovers caress, kissing her nose. 

Eleine smiled, taking the lead in the army, not able to see her man, but knowing he was here, somewhere. 

 

In the absolute manner of things, it turned out that it was not their lot to promise tomorrows. Another day of offering their sweat and aching muscles to the parched sands brought them only a partial way closer to Griffon Wing Keep, and a raven from Skyhold that sent her and her advisors into a secluded tent, arguing. 

Leliana pressed her knuckles into Cullen’s ragged table, blue-grey eyes flashing beneath her hood. “We must return ahead of the army, Commander. My agents can only do so much with delayed orders.” 

“And leave the army to navigate the Approach on their own?” Cullen’s lip curled, pearl scar flashing in the flickering candle light. “Madness. I must remain behind.”

Josephine worried at her clipboard, candle spluttering low and weeping wax onto the dusty ground. “I should not have come, it was impudent at best and foolhardy at worst to abandon the—”

Leliana’s sharp gaze cut across to the Antivan woman. “And risk a delayed report that our forces had failed and the Inquisitor had perished? Risk Thedas spread panic that our one hope was gone? We discussed this, Josie. It was essential you be present _here_ to manage the damage of potential failure by controlling the information.”

“Yes,” Josephine cut back, dark eyes reflecting the flash of her candle’s flame, “and now what have we wrought? With _all_ of us gone, management of Skyhold has degenerated to chaos. The Blanchars have attempted to seize power over the Orlesian faction, the Ferelden faction has issued a duel in our honour, and tension has grated down to infighting between the remaining forces.” Her Antivan accent plucked at the air, snapping and twanging with irritation and stress. 

“We did what we thought was best,” Cullen cut in, nose crinkling in agitation, voice deep and gravely, “there is no point making apologies now.” 

Eleine cocked her hip. “Agreed. Whether you stayed or came was always going to leave us with consequences. We cannot despair the realisation of them now.”

Josephine’s lips scrunched into a purse, clenching closed around a litany of other things she clearly wanted to say. 

Leliana swept back up into a straight, taut posture, hands clasped behind her back. “Indeed. However, we cannot continue to keep pace with the army. We must return to Skyhold and catch the situation before it has time to prepare for us.”

“I will not abandon my men,” Cullen snapped, “they need me to be in this march with them.”

Leliana’s shoulders tightened, readying for a fight, but Eleine knocked a hand against the table, silencing her. “Enough.” She turned to look at Cullen, whose brows were lined and stubborn. He lifted his chin at her in challenge. “I will stay with the army.” He faltered, a look of uncertainty flashing through his eyes. “You three return to Skyhold alone.” He stiffened, jaw setting, eyes sparking. “Ride quickly and quietly. No one is to know of your approach.” 

Eleine looked away from the Cullen’s unhappy expression to find Leliana’s eyes glittering in satisfaction. “Storm Skyhold,” Eleine ordered, eyes locked with Leliana’s, “and bring them to heel.” 

Leliana’s lips curled into a soft, dangerous smile. “As you say, Inquisitor.” 

“Yes,” Josephine agreed, shoulders sagging somewhat in relief, “and might we leave tonight? While it is cool.” Eleine rose a brow at her, surprised the woman was ready for another bout of riding after their hard day. Josephine gave her a shaky sigh. “I would prefer to return to Skyhold as soon as possible.” 

“No,” Cullen cut from her right, hands clenching around the pommel of his sword. “I will not leave without ensuring the army an easy return. There is organisation to do, I must speak with Rylen and—”

“All of which I am quite capable of, yes?” Eleine argued, voice light but insistent. “And should my abilities fail in any manner, Cassandra will be more than able to compensate.” 

He moved his jaw as though chewing on something tasteless. “I will not—”

“Abandon those waiting in Skyhold, in need of your guidance and management?” Eleine countered, voice tightening. “Trust me with the army, Cullen. I will bring them home.”

“It is not that I do not trust you,” he started, aghast, and she placed a hand on his arm. 

“I know, Cullen.” She caught his eyes, and kept them, trying to push all the sincerity and understanding she felt onto her face. “I know.” 

He faltered, and then sagged, the air leaving his lips in a long sigh. “I—” He brought a hand up to rub at his brow. “Yes. Alright. Let us go.” 

Eleine gave a nod, hand slipping from his arm, turning back to Leliana. “Take no more than three others with you. Avoid the main roads, but do not dally too far lest you come upon an undiscovered rift.” 

Leliana gave a tight nod. “Understood. I will have the mounts readied.” The woman’s cool gaze turned to Cullen. “Do what you must, then join us.” 

Cullen have her a jerky nod of his head in thanks. 

“I will assist in what I can,” Eleine offered, and after a pause he gave a softer nod to her. 

She followed Cullen from the tent, leaving the two women behind to discuss who to bring with them. He was silent beside her, his limbs buzzing in agitation. The sun clawed at a distant rocky plateau, fighting to keep itself aloft as night swept across the sky. Already one moon pressed towards the pearling ground, pale light beaming down in shards where the struggling sun could not reach. 

“I must look over the resources and see how much hunting you will need to do during your return,” he began, sidestepping a dry desert bush, “if you could speak with Cassandra about organising transport of the injured in a separate contingent to Griffon Wing Keep—”

“Yes,” she said, “of course.” Hide tents peaked out from around the corner of the crag they had set up in and they slowed their pace by unspoken agreement. 

“Rylen needs to be made aware of increased Darkspawn activity in the area,” he rattled off, hand flexing around the hilt of his sword, “and the reports of lingering demons falsified.” 

“Understood.” 

“I had intended to establish a final number on those we have lost before my return to Skyhold, however…” They were barely moving anymore, taking tiny, hesitant steps. 

“I will do what I can.” 

“And…” Cullen came to a stop, just before the sprawling encampment of the army. Heat swelled from campfires and closely packed people, coiling around the corner of the crag to enclose them. He turned back to face her, one side of his face shadowed, the other warm and softened by the camps flames. “If I may.” He cleared his throat, eyes on his boots. “I would like to speak with you. Before we leave.” Eleine rose a brow he could not see. “Um. Alone.” 

Eleine’s lips tugged up into a smile. She stepped up into his space, front brushing his, and caught his eyes. “Of course, Cullen.” She leaned up, giving him a soft kiss, that he returned with an exhale of relief. For just a moment she breathed in his scent, felt his heat wash over her. She clasped his bicep, thumb rubbing along the corded muscle covered in leather and cloth. It was a slight touch, but one he seemed to push into, all the same.

Her hand lingered on his arm as she pulled away, and his eyes watched her every movement, hot and worried. 

She could still feel his eyes on her as she walked ahead into the camp to find Cassandra. 

When he came to find her it seemed only minutes had passed. She was grumbling with Cassandra in the woman’s tent, arguing over the legitimacy of the number of lost they had estimated. 

“Reports are still coming in,” Eleine hissed, only for the woman to swipe an agitated hand through the air. 

“It is an _estimate_ , Inquisitor, this will do.” In an odd way, Cassandra, still in all her armour, seemed too large to be contained in the tent. The hide canvas was pressing in on them at all sides, the gritty rock beneath their feet harsh and unaccommodating. The meagre cot tucked into the right side of the tent was perhaps indication enough to Eleine that she and Cullen had pulled out some of the better lodgings through the trip. 

Cassandra’s tent barely had room for her, let alone a _table_. 

“This will do,” Eleine mocked, just as Cullen cleared his throat from outside the tent. Eleine looked over her shoulder to see his large shadow cast across the tent entrance, looming across both her and Cassandra. 

“Inquisitor?” he called out, hesitant, “if I may have a word?” 

“Take her,” Cassandra grumped, striding past Eleine, “we will not resolve this.” 

Eleine’s jaw set in irritation as the woman whacked the tent flap back, startling Cullen, and disappearing amongst chattering soldiers. 

Eleine followed after her, ducking out into camp. Tramping feet, laughter and chatter bounded around the night washed crag. Cullen stood waiting to her left, stress lining his brow and eyes hooded. 

“I’m sorry, Cullen,” Eleine sighed, feeling more than a little irritated and defeated, “I had wanted to get the number confirmed but—”

“Oh.” He blinked, surprised. “No, of course. I— um, appreciate the effort.” 

Eleine rose a brow, and he fidgeted beneath her look, eyes dipping down to stare at a crack in the stone ground. “You wished to speak with me?” she prompted, wondering for one breathless moment if he wanted to do less speaking and more _touching_. 

“Yes.” He seemed to shake himself, drawing himself up straight, hands clasping the pommel of his sword. The grip looked less commanding then it did like he did not know what to do with his hands. His eyes darted around at the tents and people and camp fires. “Perhaps… elsewhere?” For a tiny, fraction of a moment, Cullen’s gaze darted down to the love bites on her chest. 

Touching. Eleine decided there was definitely to be touching. 

“Of course,” she smirked, and he coloured. As she stepped up beside him, his hand rested against her lower back. Warm, heavy. They ducked behind the tents, watching till stragglers either went inside or joined the others around the campfires, out of sight.

Then they slipped out of camp, and a giddy, cheeky feeling bubbled in her chest. As they turned left at the corner of the cliff rather than right where the other advisors were waiting for him, they stepped into the cliff’s shadow. 

Cullen pressed against her back, the metal of his armour hard at the back of her head, but the planes of his body supple and heated. Her heart beat picked up as he circled his arms around her, hands clasping her hips, pulling her fully against him, moulding their bodies together. Warmth rolled off his front, curling around her. 

He leaned down over her, resting his head against her shoulder, pressing his cheek against her own. 

“Cullen,” she said, breathless and needy. She rolled her hips back into him, and his breathing quickened, his arms tightening around her. 

“Elei—" 

A woman’s laugh trilled through the air, and feet came tramping close to the camp entrance. 

He pulled back, just a touch, kissing behind her ear. “This way,” he murmured, against the shell of her ear. His hand on her back nudged her forward, and she followed his directions, feet sure and steady over the rocky landscape despite the dim light. She was conscious of his every move, wanting to turn back to him and shove him against the cliff wall. He would seize her lips before she had the chance, and her hands would scorch down his front till he groaned and shook beneath her touches. 

Cullen led them a bit away from the large rock formation they had nestled part of their camp into, and skirting around its form until a little hollow came into view. 

He cleared his throat. “Here. It’s um. Secluded.” 

Eleine gave an exhalation of amusement even as she shook in anticipation, eyes straining through the dark to see where he had led her to. 

Pallid light glinted off water, the imposing orb of the moon casting as many shadows as it did light. 

They stood at the lip of a polished obsidian water bed. Not large enough to be called a lake nor an oasis, but full and lapping from an underground spring. Spindle-weed and blood lotus curled from the cracks in the sandstone edges, deep reds and oranges standing stark against the wash of the landscape. Slight breezes sent the water rippling, and Eleine let out a content exhalation from her nose.

Cullen threaded his fingers through hers, and she glanced over at him with a smile, to find his head averted, spare hand rubbing the back of his neck, his ears red. Eleine bit her bottom lip to keep from chuckling. The inky black sky shimmered around his shoulders and above his head, bejewelled and glorious. 

Just like the night they had attacked Adamant – had it really been a week since? – the sand was chilled to white by the moon. It had a radiance its sun burnished tones did not, and with the stars glittering off the water’s surface, Eleine felt as though they were cupped in the palms of the heavens themselves. 

Cullen gave a little content sigh, sounding tired but not pained. “Of course it was not to be that we had weeks.” 

Eleine allowed a sigh of her own. “Yes.” 

Cullen cleared his throat, and she cast a glance in his direction. He was looking off to the side, free hand rubbing the back of his neck. Ah. Eleine squeezed the large fingers wrapped around her own. 

He had something to say. 

“What is it?” she murmured, turning to face him. The distant noises of camp and the water soothed through the air around them. 

“Rather than…” he turned his head a touch, peeking over at her. “Rather than promising tomorrow.” He heaved a sigh. “Maker. I have no talent with words.” He whipped around in such a fast movement Eleine jerked, and he looked at once repentant. Still, rather than the tumble of apologies she expected, he cupped her cheek with his free hand. The touch burned through her skin to her heart. “In the future, I want to promise you the now.” He faltered at her open mouthed look. “Do you… do you understand?” 

Eleine huffed a breath of laughter, her hand coming up to cover his on her cheek. “Yes,” she smiled, “I think I’d like that.” 

“I mean to say,” he struggled, and she could see his cheeks and ears reddening even in the pale light, “I will make time for you.” His eyes dipped down to the ground in shy hesitation, only to peek back up at her again. “For us.” 

A fist squeezed around her heart, setting her stomach churning in a pleasant array of emotions. “Never did I—” Eleine’s throat squeezed closed in an unwilling swallow. Cullen’s eyes danced between her own, amber orbs of hope and glittering care. Eleine pressed her head into his hand, closing her eyes around the fizzing nerves in her stomach. “Through everything that has happened to me, all the inexplicable luck, all the skims with death.” She shook her head. “Never once did I think I was blessed.” Eleine peeled her eyes back open, needing, needing to see him. Her cheeks warmed into a small, tender smile. 

She squeezed his hand. “But sometimes when I look at you.” His hand was shaking, his eyes wide. “And you say these _things_.” Eleine huffed, eyes stinging. “If the Maker is to have taken any form in my life, Cullen.” Her voice whispered through the air alongside a breeze. “It was to bring me to you.” 

Cullen gave a sharp inhalation, and the breath seemed to catch in his chest. His hand on her cheek turned into a snare, yanking her forward and up into an urgent kiss. His desperation to express the things he had no words to coloured the searing touches. Eleine drank the emotions off his hot tongue, his hand on her cheek turning around to thread through her own. With their hands clasped between them, fronts pressed together as much as his armour would allow, their lips demanded more and more from each other. 

When they pulled back for air, Cullen pressed his forehead against her own, and she let her eyes slip shut. She was enclosed in his scent and warmth. 

Eleine took uneven breaths in through her nose, her heart thumping in her chest. “Red Templars are vulnerable to the destruction of their crystals. Shatter a shard and it will stun them.”

Cullen nodded his head against hers. 

“Demons tend to stray only so far from the rifts. If you encounter one or two, leave a mark on the map for me but give the area as large a berth as you can.”

Another nod.

“If you are left with no choice but to engage with Venatori, target their Spellbinders first. Establish a star formation with Josephine in the middle. We have found it confuses them into dividing their spells to target all the outlying assailants.”

“I will,” Cullen agreed, voice rumbling and solemn. 

“If a bear happens upon you, target the back left knee. It is the weakest joint I have discovered in almost all of them.”

“I’ll remember,” he promised. 

Her hands were shaking. “Alert me if there are… new refugees in Skyhold.”

Cullen butted his head against hers. “I will. If a soldier wanders off into the sands, do not follow them yourself. Send a small team of mixed capabilities after them.”

Eleine nodded. 

“Keep the Mages and the Templars mingling as long as tensions will allow.”

“I’ll keep an eye on them,” she promised, “and mediate as best I can.” 

“What rogues we have will need to be spread amongst the ranks, do not let them stray entirely to the front or back of the lines as they like to do.”

“I’ll ensure it.”

Their murmuring warnings and advice shifted into intimate entreaties for the other to be well. 

“Sleep as best you can,” Eleine hushed to him. 

“Drink every hour,” Cullen whispered. 

“Be safe.” 

Cullen’s hands tightened around her own, his touch pressing his desire into her skin like a brand. “Be safe.” He gave her one last, lingering kiss, before stepping back. 

“Goodbye, Cullen.” The next breeze caught her words, and scattered them over the sands. Eleine watched him leave, disappointment a heart beat in her stomach. 

Weeks, she had said they had. Weeks now, they were to have between them. And what was she to return to? 

Harper? 

Cullen’s red form dipped behind a corner in the cliff, and she was left alone with his scent clinging to her hair and clothes. 

Eleine bit her lip, fear and anxiety making her stomach churn. 

She prayed she returned to Harper. In the weeks – months? – since sending her welcome to the mad woman, she had heard nothing. 

_There’s not many of us left_ the woman had said. Perhaps she had not been able to spare another to carry the message to Eleine? 

Till Stroud it had not bothered her. So what if the woman died? But now it was more. She could have sent people to collect her old companions. Could have ensured they made it to Skyhold safely. She had not. 

Had this abandonment cost the life of an innocent child as well as those of her old companions?

Eleine returned to camp in time to hear the distant shuffle and neigh of horses navigating the shifting sands. 

 

Eleine gave her large tent she had shared with Cullen to the healers, and stayed in one similar to Cassandra’s for the next two weeks. With her advisors gone, Eleine found herself circling their forces rather than taking up a point and remaining there for the day’s march. She had little time to spend with Varric and Solas, and threw herself straight into her cot when her duties for the night were complete. 

The cotton covers either tipped her into an easy rest, or held her captive for hours, with oakmoss and spice and elderflower suffusing the fibres. 

As she moved through the lines of her people, more and more Mages saw fit to come speak with her. When she asked his opinion on the matter, Varric murmured that he thought more of the force would seek her out if only they knew something to talk to her about, the way the Mages did. 

The landscape changed. The dry brush grew more, rocks lined paths, the horizon shimmered less and less over melting dunes. Soon the sand was lost to grey, stale cliffs and crags, and then that too gave way to smattering rains and tinges of green growth. 

A week out of Skyhold, on the cusp of a Dales forest, three ravens swooped down over the emerald burdened trees to flap about her face. 

Eleine frowned as she held out an arm for them all. Talons carefully navigated her leather clad arm, and with black, oily feathers fluffing around her face, they settled long enough for her to snag all three rolls of parchment tied to their scaled legs. 

Small letters – _C, J_ and _L_ – were inscribed on them. 

Eleine shook her arm, startling the birds into graceless flight. The ravens circled her head, waiting with a trained eye for her to read and respond to the reports. 

She tried to still her hammering heart, forcing herself to read Leliana and Josephine’s reports first. Leliana had little to say, as she always did, inferring that Eleine would be pleased with the results of their early return and that there was no need for her to rush the armies return. 

Josephine, however, scrawled the roll of parchment top to bottom with tight, black words, bemoaning the political disaster that had waited for her return. After several effusive paragraphs – of how _terrible_ it was that Comte this had challenged Comte that and oh, how _impossible_ it had all been to navigate – Josephine ended the report on the note that she had managed to bring all parties to an agreement, casting out those who had sought to control each faction and alleviating tensions between the Ferelden’s and Orlesian’s through a feast. 

Finally, Eleine allowed her fingers to speed through the ribbon containing Cullen’s handwriting. Eleine unrolled it. And unrolled it. And— Maker, but it was long. 

_Eleine._

_We have arrived back in Skyhold. Maker, but I was a fool to suggest I stay with the army. Things here are worse than the report allowed and I spend my every free moment thanking your good sense._

_It seems in our absence a few… mongrels have fallen back on old biases and shunted the elves into separate quarters, reducing the ranks of a few to no more than servants. The elves did not go quietly. There have been several murders, and good riddance. Leliana has begun weeding out the assassins and recruiting them for herself while Josephine and I have been seeing to the rest, attempting to make our apologies clear and compensating them where we can._

_The offending parties have been apprehended and thrown to the cells awaiting your judgement. I trust you are amenable to these accommodations?_

_The ‘infighting’ between the Templars and Mages we received reports on is messier than I have the ability to mend. No one was killed or worse, thank the Maker, but tension is reaching a height I have not seen since we lost Haven._

_I am sorry to tell you there was an incident today. Your son, Sven, stole and rammed a training sword into an ex-Templar for suggesting you were an abomination. As you well know, Sven is perhaps… not the most adept at fighting. Forgive me. Before I could intervene, he had his arm broken._

_(His partner?) Art broke the woman’s leg in retaliation. By the time I made it down the stairs into the training grounds, it took three men to tear them apart, all of them receiving injuries in the process._

_Sven cheered the fight on from a rock. I think I heard him yell something about baking arms? Revenge for his baker’s arms?_

_When I went to reprimand the woman, she looked at me as though I would understand._

_It makes me sick to think a few years ago… I may have._

_As it is, she is confined to the infirmary and awaiting your judgement. I would deal with the matter myself, but Josephine suggested it should be brought under the whole of the Inquisitions notice._

_Might I suggest relocation away from her family into the field?_

_Whatever your decision, you have my support._

_Sven is already recovering, with Art by his side at every moment. I allowed him time off his duties after I caught him sneaking off from his patrol to see Sven. I did not see fit to punish either of them for the fight. Sven seemed… repentant enough._

_As of this moment that is all I have to report, though I have every feeling that a messenger is about to walk through that door with some other nonsense to deal with and I will be very sorry to have sent this off so soon._

_May the rest of your journey be safe and quick._

_Cullen._

Eleine sat atop her steed, stunned, the world slowly creeping back into place. Her mind reeled with it all, and her horse had to pick its own path through the army and into the tree line. The raven’s flying about her head croaked raspy calls at her, urging her to hurry with her response. 

Anger had come quick and fast at the beginning of the report. How dare they defile the Inquisition with their prejudices? How dare they operate so wrongly in something that was _hers_? She had thought the rest of it would follow in much the same way. 

_There was an incident today._ Her stomach had tightened to stone at the words. But— _Your son, Sven,_ sent it dropping to the forest floor. 

That stupid, fool boy. 

Eleine groaned, startling a red-faced soldier plodding along by her side. 

“Everythin’… alright, Inquisitor?” the woman asked, blinking up at her, her hand jerking up to clap her chest in respect. 

Eleine groaned again, pinching her nose and then covering her eyes with her hands. “My son got into a fight.” 

The woman snorted, and Eleine peered down at her from in between her fingers. The woman’s ruddy cheeks coloured even more. “Your, ah, son. The scrawny one, yeah?” 

Eleine smiled despite herself. “That’s him.” Her smile dropped and she rubbed her fingers into the ache brewing in her brow. “Stupid boy.” Her fingers crinkled the parchment in hand, and she found a second one tucked up against the back. 

A slip of a note with Sven’s terrible writing dashing across it. 

_Sorry._

Eleine heaved a sigh, and the swords-woman beside her chuckled lowly. “Son’s will do ‘at to ya.”

Eleine tucked the tiny note into one of her pouches, looking down at the woman with a cocked head. “Oh? You have one of your own?” 

The smile the woman gave her was nothing short of beaming with delight. Teeth flashed and freckled cheeks pulled back. “Aye. My little Robert. Not a whit of sense in ‘im.” Eleine could not help but laugh at that. “Thank the Maker I am coming home to ‘im.” 

They both subdued. “Yes,” Eleine agreed, thinking of Sven’s little pouts and grown hair. “Indeed.” 

A raven swooped through the lattice work of branches at her head, cawing at her in irritation. Eleine swatted at the air, shooing the bird away. “Maler’s breath,” Eleine cursed. 

“Careful, Terror,” Varric called to her from where he was trotting past on his pony, “you’re starting to sound like Curly.” 

Eleine pretended she did not hear him, and returned to the missive in hand. A slip of a finger revealed one more surprise. 

Written on a separate piece of parchment so small she could have dropped it and lost it amongst the brush, was a final note. Crumpled and ruined, Cullen’s handwriting was jagged and shaky. 

_You are the last thing I think about before I sleep, and the first thing I think about when I wake._

Eleine pressed the note against her clenching, pounding heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone had a lovely holiday break and are all rested up ready for the new year! We're moving into some more Cullen heavy content, so I hope you buckle up and enjoy it while it's there! 
> 
> Thank you for reading, lots of love as always xx


	37. Slate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait! I hope you are all well :)
> 
> Lots of love as always xx

_Cullen._

_We will be arriving in no more than a week. Allow the prisoners one meal a day and enough water, but deny all requests to see their family members. No exercise time._

_Have them chained._

_Do what you can to manage the situation between the Mages and Templars. They do not know the bond those that came with the army have managed to establish. Even now as I write from my steed I can see two of them chattering and holding hands._

_I hope seeing this will sway some of their opinions on coexistence._

_As for the woman who injured my son, though my first instinct is to have her sent to the prisons alongside the others, I will relent in that Sven did initiate the violence himself. (Let him know I will be having words with him, yes?) Leave her in isolation in the infirmary. No visits from family or friends. Let her stew._

_If it is any consolation, you are not alone in such a thing, Cullen. Before I knew you, I was no friend to the order. I believed my fellow Mages, and thought ill of anyone who didn’t._

_Seeing them turn to animals during the uprising tilted my views somewhat, but it was not until I listened to your plight that I truly understood._

_Do not let it haunt you, Cullen. We learned._

_It’s what we choose to do now that is important._

_Eleine._

And down the very bottom in careful, tilting strokes:

_There are very few moments I am not thinking of your arms around me._

* * *

 

_Eleine._

_It is done. We await your return._

_Andraste guide you home._

_By the Maker, but I miss you._

_Cullen._

* * *

 

_Cullen._

_I am a day out at most._

_Each hour that passes without you here is an agony._

_Not long now, love._

_Are you sleeping well?_

_Eleine._

* * *

 

  _Eleine._

_Not nearly as well as I did when I held you._

_Cullen._

* * *

 

The procession into Skyhold was as organised and grand as Eleine and her tired army could bother to make it. They crossed the long stone bridge in two blocks of three lines each, with Eleine and her companions at the head.

What banners had survived the attack on Adamant spotted their lines, stained green cloth flapping and snapping in the wind.

They were all stained. Blood that hadn’t managed to wash out, dirt that was inlaid in the cracks of scratched armour. They were weary.

The rhythmic tramp of their feet was a solemn, weighty sound bounding around the chilled mountains. Everything was stark lines and sharp edges. From the gleaming, steel white of the mountain peaks to the shields and swords of her people behind her.

Even the sky seemed a jagged grey-blue slate.

Shouts rang out from within the walls as lookouts saw their approach and people rushed to the ramparts to see them march in. Cries of joy leapt up to the sky, cheers swirling around them.

By the time Eleine’s dusky steed clopped its way to the wrought iron gate, the soldiers behind her had puffed out their chests, some colour returning to their cheeks.  

“They’ve returned!”

“It’s the Inquisitor.”

“Thank the Maker!”

Faces swarmed in front of her as she was the first to enter the courtyard, tilting up to look at her, shinning with awe and relief. Eleine closed her eyes for a moment, letting the roar of the crowd diminish to a dim rush of wind in her ears. She took in a deep breath, letting Skyhold’s scents settle in her lungs: fresh bread, leather and mountain flowers.

She opened her eyes with her exhale.

People pressed against her horse, stopping the armies advance. Eleine looked down at them, a twinge of unease in her chest. Hands reached up for her. Lithe arms of the elves, stocky muscles of the dwarves. Long limbs of the humans. Noble Orlesian masks glinted alongside ruffling furs of Ferelden’s.

People baring swords and shields, others staves and bows.

A hand clasped her thigh. Eleine considered it for a few breathless moments, before reaching out tentative fingers and laying them atop it. She could not see to who it belonged, but a pleased cry shot through her ears the moment they touched.

More and more swarmed her, and she tried to touch those who touched her back. Perhaps she needed this as much as them.

Something physical to reaffirm that yes, she had gone to war, and yes, she had returned. It seemed so… dim now.

Her heart was pounding, the world was spinning, she was smiling. Her army poured through the gate, lines forgotten, rushing into the arms of their loved ones. Friends clapped each-others backs, some ruffled the hairs of younger soldiers.

Others slunk off from the crowd, tears flashing in the sun as their families failed to come through the gate.

A hand latched onto her ankle. Eleine looked down to find Sven clinging to her. With one arm in a sling, tawny hair a mess atop his head, his walnut brown eyes shimmered with tears.

Eleine let go of whoever she had been holding, her arms whipping down to seize his underarms. Sven grinned, freckled cheeks pulling back, as she heaved him up, muscles screaming. He kicked his legs, folding over her horse, before finally clambering onto the front of her saddle.

Through the boom of the crowd, she could hear his delighted laughs in her ear as she pressed him into a crushing hug. Sven wrapped his one good arm around her, head nestling into the crook of her neck. Eleine squeezed her eyes shut over the tears there.

Home. She’d made it home.

Joy was a sharp dagger in her heart, a force that pressed outwards. She felt like she was going to burst.

She opened her eyes, pressing a kiss to his hairy head. Maker, but it had grown shaggy. Her fingers ran through the strands, toying with the soft clumps.

Eleine’s eyes flickered up to find her advisors watching her from the throne room steps landing. She drank in the sight of Cullen, glorious and tall and smiling. A breeze lifted his tamed curls, sending the gold strands into a molten riot. She hugged Sven tighter, wanting, needing to be in those arms again.

How she wanted to vault off this horse and fly up the stairs to him.

He had his arms curled tight around his body, clutching at himself – and she knew in an instant he wanted much the same. Even from this distance she could see the lines of tension on his brow, the gouges that told her of a forced restraint.

Then a shadow passed in her periphery, and Eleine’s smoky eyes cut to it. Leliana stood half behind Josephine, her shroud over her face seeming to drink up the sun and leave her in a pocket of night.

Her eyes were steel-grey from this distance. Sharp and edged. Eleine knew what they were saying to her.

Enemies lingered in Skyhold.

She needed to show more than her heart, now.

Leliana’s hand twitched to a dagger Eleine knew she hid against her leg.

Eleine needed to remind those who had remained behind that she was power, and she was violence.

The moment passed, her ears were again barraged by the clamour, and Sven leaned back to grin up at her. It faltered at the sight of her face, and she knew whatever softness had been there previous had keened to a point.

Eleine curled her arms around Sven, keeping him close to her chest, but reclasping the reins of her steed. Eleine jerked them around, the dusky animal’s hoofs kicking up dust as people scrambled out of her way.

“Inquisition,” she called, and the noise hushed enough so that she could be heard over them. “who was victorious?” The quiet shattered once more, and soldiers stamped their feet and clapped swords against shields. “Look to your right,” she shouted over them, “who is there?” Heads turned and people looked at each other, the uproar dampening once again. “To your left,” Eleine continued, voice hard and edged. She pulled her horse this way and that, and the crowd pulled back to give her a circle of space. “Who stands beside you?”

“My brother!” a woman’s voice clapped back at her, and Eleine’s mouth slashed in a  feral grin.

“You brother,” Eleine crowed, exultant. Her eyes scoured the faces looking at her, their eyes blinking, expressions awed. “Brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers.” Eleine pointed at a thin elven man, stood beside a dwarf. The red-headed elf blinked large eyes at her, stiffening as the crowd looked at him. “You stood beside one another, you fought for one another.” There was a beat rising from the crowd again, pulsing, hearts thumping in tandem. “You spilled blood for one another.”

A voice, sharp and clear cut through the growing noise. It called from her left, and though she did not recognise the gravel tone nor see from whom it came, something. “We are the Inquisition,” it rallied.

“We do not bring hate and pain,” the elven man she had pointed at shouted, cheeks flushing, eyes flashing.

“But peace!” several people joined in.

“Let our blades pass through Corypheus’ rotted flesh,” the crowd began to chant, and Eleine smiled down at them all, the heart beat penetrating even her thick skin.

“Let out blood nourish the ground,” rippled across the courtyard, and Eleine leaned her head back, sending her smile to the heavens.

“Let our cries touch their hearts.” Sven was shaking in her arms, perhaps caught up in the roiling mass of people at their feet. She drew him tighter against her chest, his weight a balm, his heat a prayer.

As one the Inquisition called, and the noise seemed to blot out all else. Eleine’s eyes slipped closed as the final line she had spoken months ago was screamed back at her.

“Let ours be the sacrifice that matters to _all_!”

As the crowd erupted once more, yells pulling from victorious throats, Eleine leaned her head back further from Sven, fire searing through her veins. It snarled low in her belly, pulling up tighter and tighter and tighter until it was a mass of pressing power clawing to be released.

She cracked open her mouth, a dragon’s maw widening, and with a _boom_ that sent vibrations skittering across the courtyard, flame burst from her mouth.

Raw, blistering power wrenched from her core and throat up into a roiling pillar.

She tempered the stream, keeping it from getting too hot for Sven and from widening out to catch the onlookers. As her people screamed their appreciation, a few mages joined in the performance, and soon the courtyard was swathed in ash and ice.

She let her mana and energy rip from her in a bleeding cry, her hands holding Sven tucked up against her.

When she clapped her mouth shut, the fire wisping out, it left the world strangely empty. A hollowness rang through the air without the roar of her fire.

Silence pounded in her ears like a heartbeat.

          

When the fanfare was complete and she managed to get off her horse back onto solid, familiar ground, Eleine was swept up by her advisors immediately. Though her eyes had run over and over the faces looking at her, she did not manage to catch even a hint of Dorian.

Nor Harper, Sarlaros or Landen.

Dread coiled up tight in her gut.

Before they could all enter the door to begin business, Cullen who had lagged behind them all, snagged her arm and gave it a slight yank. Leliana and Josephine slipped through the oak doors, chattering and unaware.

Eleine blinked back at him, and stilled at the haggard smile he gave her. Tired, drawn.

But still tender.

It was impossible to tell which of them moved, but they were together before she had time to draw breath. Arms clenched around her waist, hers wound around his neck and Cullen kissed her, mouth demanding and rushed. She made a noise, something tilted with pleasure and surprise, that his tongue caught and swiped into his own mouth. 

It was no more than a few stolen moments, where they pushed and pulled against each other. She threw all her weight at him, shoving up onto her toes, and he took it all with a little moan, such a pillar of strength.

He pushed back, and even as she fought it, and they struggled, lips bruising, she found herself arched like a bow, his hands moving to support her. One on her ass, one on her upper back, he bent her beneath him, mouth taking and taking.

Then they were just holding each other, and shaking. Eleine clung to him, as he clung to her, her head tucked up underneath his neck.

“Thank the Maker you have returned,” he breathed, chin nuzzling her head.

“Yes,” Eleine released in a shaky breath, “praise the Maker.”

Disentangling from one another was a slow process, perhaps too slow, though Eleine could not find it in herself to care about the two women no doubt waiting in suspicion inside the room.

Cullen swiped a few more kisses from her, getting a tittering laugh from her, before they made any decided move.

Once secreted away into the musty war room, however, with Josephine’s clipboard candle burning bright and Cullen’s solid presence to her left, her advisors fought to speak over one another, regaling her with all that occurred while they were at Adamant.

Eleine took the scroll of parchment from Leliana that had the names of the elven victims – dainty _M_ ’s beside the names of those who had murdered their abusers.

Eleine organised for a meeting to be made between her and those affected by the situation, so she could apologise herself and ask what _they_ would like her do to those rats rotting in prison. Cullen looked a mixture of amused and grim when the incident was brought up. Apparently Sven had made _quite_ the spectacle of himself up on that rock. Eleine could only groan and rub her forehead.

After a long and heated discussion, they agreed that the ex-Templar her son had attacked would be brought before her in judgement, alongside Sven and Art.

Distaste was rot on her tongue at the very thought of bringing Sven to such open regard. However, she acquiesced to Josephine that she could not show him undue favour, despite him having it.

“Appearances, appearances,” Eleine clucked, to which Cullen snorted and Josephine frowned.

Before conversation could dally towards the looming issue of Celene’s assassination, Josephine shuffled her feet, eyes darting around the room. “Inquisitor,” she hedged, accent halting and nervous, “there is something we wish to… discuss with you.”

Eleine rose her brow, and Leliana huffed in amusement. “What Josie means, is that we have something to show you.” Eleine turned her wary look to Leliana, but the woman’s face was smooth and clear. A glance at Cullen revealed him to be looking between them all, brows scrunched in confusion.

Interesting. Eleine inclined her head. “What is it?”

Josephine opened a dark chest sat on the corner of the war table with hasty hands, withdrawing a large roll of parchment. Paint splattered on the corners and a dagger of  suspicion lodged in between her ribs. Not looking her in the eye, Josephine held it out to her.

“We thought it time,” she was babbling, “especially considering the current climate of Skyhold— well, Leliana and I were discussing that _this_ in particular was more appropriate—”

“Shush,” Eleine cut in, and Josephine’s jaw clacked shut, her dark eyes dancing with anxiety. Eleine took her own untrusting eyes off the woman to regard the scratchy parchment in hand. About as long and thick as her arm, Eleine gathered it was going to unfurl into something large. Her fingers ripped at the red ribbon knot holding it together, before sliding underneath the lip and pulling it apart.

Down, it rolled. Down, down and down. Eleine’s mouth popped open, horror flickering in her chest.

Red paint splashed across what she now realised was canvas, not parchment.

It was a painting. A painting of _her_.

Eleine was frozen, the image searing into her eyes, branded into her mind forever.

Strokes of black carved the stance of her body; the smoky folds of her robes raised and glorious, the leather slick over her curves. She stood, feet planted apart, against a wash of red, orange and yellow. Face turned off to the side, she looked with ferocity at something off canvas. Her black hair wisped out around her, as though wind had pushed it free of its braid.

And in her arms was a small elven child, tiny brushstrokes carving its starved body. Minute fingers clasped her front, its face turned up to gaze at her, an expression of glowing hope there.

Eleine took a horrified step back, even though she held the painting and it followed her.

Her face was hers, but not hers. It bore an expression of determination, of care. Of power unlike her own. It was a benevolent, gentle power. She tried to find the fire of anger in the dead, smoky eyes of the painting.

The painting’s skin seemed cold, without the waves of heat that flushed from her broken morality.

There was no sharp line of her eyebrows, the tale of her noble birth which had tainted her. Instead they were gentle inclines and slight arches.

It was her, but a poor imitation. A twisted image, a fallacy.

A fantasy of what the Inquisitor should have been, of who _she_ should have been.

Had she not been a murderer since she was a child.

It was her, the weak thing that squatted in her chest, praying to have the chance to emerge.

“Maker’s breath,” Cullen cursed at her side, and she was struck by his sudden proximity. He leaned over her shoulder, peering down at the painting. She could not bring herself to see what expression he bore.

“We have needed to promote the Inquisition for some time,” Josephine was explaining, tripping over the words.

“With things as they are, such a painting spread across Thedas would send a message to all potential allies,” Leliana continued, tone clear as glass, without a hint of remorse.

“Both that we are in support of the plight of elves,” Josephine said, “and that we welcome whatever assistance they could provide.”

“And,” Leliana cut, voice low and dangerous, “that those who wish to see them oppressed, will find no sanctuary within our walls.” Her voice dropped to no more than a whisper. “Or without them.”

Eleine could only stare at the portrait, stomach tied into knots, speechless. Then it burst out of her, rage, hot thick. Fear darted behind it all, with guilt hunting its tail. “This is not me,” she shouted, and she heard Josephine take a startled step back.

“What happened to her eyebrows?” Cullen asked, and Eleine felt as though he had punctured her. The air whooshed out of her as she turned to look at him. He was frowning down at the painting, brows pulled and unhappy, eyes filled with such innocent confusion it made her shake her head. He noticed her looking and blinked at her incredulous stare.

Eleine waved it in his face, to which he leaned his head back, irritation darting through his eyes. “My eyebrows,” she said, voice heated, “you think my eyebrows are the worst part of this?”

He waved a hand in front of his face, keeping the painting from mushing against his nose. “What did you mean, then, if not the eyebrows?”

“The rest of it,” Eleine snapped, and pulled the painting back so she could jab a finger at the fake face. “Look at this. Who is this? You’d think this woman was running around picking crystal grace and singing hymns to orphans.”

“You love picking crystal grace,” Cullen argued, brows drawing further together in confusion, and that was definitely a chuckle Eleine heard from Leliana.

“It is only an image,” Leliana interjected, voice snaking across Eleine’s shoulders and drawing her taut.

“I’m not an image,” Eleine hissed, cheeks warm, deciding not to comment on the crystal grace. 

“Yes,” Leliana argued, a small smile pulling up her lips, “you are.”

Eleine opened her mouth, but Cullen beat her to it. “I think the painting is very close to what you looked like that day.” At her hot glare he stumbled. “Except the eyebrows.”

Eleine threw her hands up into the air and tried not to burn the painting. “What day?” she bit, “and my eyebrows are _not_ what I am displeased with.”

“You looked at them for quite some time—” Cullen began, but Leliana cut across him as though he had never spoken.

“This was not a commissioned painting,” Leliana answered her, “no matter what you might think of us.”

“Do you remember that company of refugees that came in after your return from the Western Approach?” Josephine asked, “and you had that elven child in your arms and rode gallantly into the courtyard and—”

“Gallantly,” Eleine choked.

“A certain Ferelden lord happened to be present at the time.” Leliana clasped her hands behind her back. “One with great skill with the finer arts.” Then Leliana smirked. Slashing, toothy, it was not exactly kind, and Eleine was all at once uneasy.

Josephine blushed, and Eleine looked between her and Leliana, feeling she was missing something. “He…” Josephine cleared her throat, eyes darting between Eleine and Cullen. Her words tumbled from her lips in a rush of lilting accent. “It seems he was quite taken by you and intended to offer this for your hand in marriage.” Eleine’s mouth dropped open a touch and Cullen shifted on his feet, but did not say a word. Josephine cleared her throat again. “Once rumours of your…” her eyes darted between them again, “commitment to one another became Skyhold’s favourite gossip—”

“What?” Cullen cut.

“He desisted such hopes and instead gave the painting to myself and Leliana,” Josephine finished.

“Favourite gossip?” Cullen chewed out, his hand settling on her hip as though she was the one distressed about this.

Leliana’s eyes honed in on his hand, only to flicker up to Eleine’s face and then dance with supreme amusement. “Oh yes,” the woman delighted, “everyone wants to know about the lucky peasant boy who grew up to be connected with one of the most powerful people in Thedas.”

Cullen groaned. “Maker’s breath.”

“And how it is that the Commander of the Inquisition managed to tame such a rampant Mage,” Leliana lilted, and it was Eleine’s turn to groan.

“I did not—” Cullen spluttered, but Eleine patted his arm and shook her head.

“Don’t, love,” she sighed and he quietened, feet still shuffling in agitation.

“This _lord_ obviously did not know her well if he did such a poor rendering of her eyebrows,” Cullen sniffed, instead. His hand pulled her against his side, and Josephine blushed again.

“Yes, well,” Leliana smiled her secret smile, “he saw her from quite a distance.” She cocked her head to the side, cheek written so plainly across her innocent features. “And he has not had such ample time as you to get acquainted with her face.”

Cullen sniffed again, but as Eleine looked over at him, it was to find his expression pleased. Eleine rolled her eyes, throwing the painting onto the table as one would throw bones to a mabari.

“Do what you wish with it,” Eleine said.

“We will need to have him paint more—” Josephine began.

“And pay him for the commission,” Leliana finished.

Eleine crossed her arms and rolled her neck. “Whatever you wish,” she laboured, “just do not consult me on the matter anymore. I don’t want to know.” Cullen’s hand squeezed her hip, and settled against him a little more, a wave of warmth and contentment washing through her at the long awaited proximity.

Discussion dallied off to other matters, the upcoming ball and assassination one of the many heavy topics. They decided to leave the brunt of the planning until tomorrow, so Eleine could rest for the night.

However, it was made clear that the ball was to be in a month and a half, and that time in between was going to have scant respite.

Before they all left, Eleine pressed her hands into the table, eyes burning across the tan expanse of the map. Her knuckles turned white, and tension pulled into a tight ball at between her shoulders.

“Inquisitor?” Leliana prodded, accent plucking at Eleine’s nerves, but remaining far softer than anything she had heard from the woman yet. “Is there something else?”

Eleine pressed her lips together. She did not have the fortitude to look up at any of them. “Have any refugees arrived since our absence?” There was a distance between herself hearing the words, and speaking them. Her tone was calm and even and not at all reflective of the clawing mess inside her.

There was a confused pause. “No, Inquisitor,” Cullen halted, “there were none.”

“Perhaps,” Leliana lilted, “you were expecting someone?”

Again and again Eleine’s eyes traced the curves of Thedas’ mountains and lakes and forests. Where were they? “I was.” The admission fell upon the room like a heavy weight into a river. _Dead_ , something whispered into her ear, _they were dead and it was all her—_

“I was not… aware,” Cullen hedged, his rumbling voice hesitant and stumbling, “that we were expecting more recruits.”

Eleine sighed, closing her eyes as though squeezing her lids together would banish the moment. “I once spoke of Harper, yes?” Her voice bounced around the room, dead to even her own ears. Eleine heaved herself back up, off the table, and clenched two hands around the bar of steel within her.

Eleine opened her eyes to find confused, troubled amber staring back at her. Cullen gave a sharp nod. “The… acquaintance from the circle?”

Eleine inclined her head, not missing the slight scuff of boots shifting across stone. Even hearing that slight movement from Leliana was enough to tell Eleine the woman was suspicious. She refused to look at the woman, keeping her eyes on Cullen.

His lips were parted and downturned, his brow scrunched together, his nose wrinkling. He could feel it, she was sure. The weight of unspoken truths between them. He could see her darting fear, her anxiety.

Perhaps even her guilt.

Eleine wanted to shake herself. Out quick, and retreat.

“Harper was our lyrium smuggler, back in Haven,” Eleine informed the room at large, to mixed reactions. Raising of the brows from Cullen and another scuffle from Leliana. Josephine started scratching her quill across her clipboard as though marking the new information down. “There were very few individuals from the circle that I had much to do with. Harper, Landen and Sarlaros were perhaps… those who saw the most of me.”

“And Mathias?” Leliana cut in, voice sharp, hungry. Eleine stiffened, insides turning to chipped ice.

Cullen’s eyes widened as he watched her keen to a ferocious point. “Mathias.” Eleine’s voice slithered across the room, cold and dangerous. “You mean the ill man you chained and precipitated to an early, undeserved death?”

Josephine gasped and Cullen growled out a “what?” face chipping into furious lines.

“I was not made aware of this,” he snapped, and there was accusation for Leliana and _her_ in his tone.

Eleine looked away, out one window. The sky had darkened early, rainclouds gathering atop a far off mountain. “Mathias and I had very little to do with one another.” She struggled with words for a few moments, working her jaw. “I found him once in the halls. We… interacted, and then parted.”

Eleine turned a seething glare onto Leliana. The woman had the grace to look down. “That is why your containment and interrogation of him brought you no closer to the answers you seek.”

“What answers?” Cullen cut, anger vibrating from his side of the room, “what is going on here?”

Eleine decided to ignore him as surely as Leliana did. “Harper, Sarlaros and Landen escaped the circle and remained together. A few… months ago I received a desperate request for them to come stay in Skyhold.”

“Why—” Leliana began, but Eleine cut her off before the damned raven could scent for more blood.

“Sarlaros has fallen pregnant.” The room fell silent, and from her periphery Eleine could see some of Cullen’s sharp edges smooth out. Not enough. “And they are being hunted.” Unease spiked on the inside of her skin.

“Months, you say,” Josephine halted, voice subdued with horror.

Leliana and Cullen stiffened as they too reached the same conclusion. Eleine’s eyes fell to the dirty stones at her feet. “Yes,” Eleine breathed. “Months. I have not had any word.” She rubbed at her brow, digging her fingers into her eyes. “I had hoped to return to find them here, however…” she sighed. It was the time for her final decision. Time to rip the leg off the table and let what sat atop, out of sight, tumble to the ground. “Leliana, have your agents search for them. I want them found, dead or alive.”

Eleine looked back up, the command straightening her back, sending that steel bar inside her smoothing out through her limbs.

“Of course, Inquisitor,” Leliana clipped, “I will deal with the matter personally.”

 “Oh,” Eleine cut, a jagged, cruel smile tugging up one side of her lips, “I am sure you will.” Acid and scorn dripped off her every word. Eleine turned to face the woman to find her blue glittering beneath her hood. “Do remember my warning from last time, yes?”

The ground and world moved before Eleine even realised she had. Leliana did not step back as Eleine almost pressed her nose into the woman’s. “If you keep them from me,” Eleine whispered, loud enough that the other occupants of the room could hear, but soft enough to be filled with dark promises. “I will make you suffer for it.”

“I expect no less,” Leliana returned, voice calm yet sharp.  

“Out,” Eleine commanded her, eyes flickering over to Josephine, making the woman jerk and shuffle to the door after Leliana.

Cullen remained behind, and with a sigh, Eleine turned to face him.

           

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next, Cullen and Eleine have a very serious conversation about patience and secrets. 
> 
> Thanks for reading, it means a lot to me <3


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